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D-Wave Announces Commercially Available Quantum Computer

Posted by timothy on from the you-either-have-one-or-you-don't dept.

New submitter peetm writes "Computing company D-Wave has announced they're selling a quantum computing system commercially, which they're calling the D-Wave One. The D-Wave system comes equipped with a 128-qubit processor designed to perform discrete optimization operations. A qubit is the basic unit of quantum information – analogous to a bit in conventional computing. For a broader understanding of how qubits work, check out Ars Technica's excellent guide."

2 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Quantum annealing by zrbyte · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Exactly. The summary should of at least mentioned that there are serious controversies around the working and "quantumness" of the machine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems#Criticism http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110531/full/474018a.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nature%2Frss%2Fcurrent+(Nature+-+Issue)&utm_content=Google+Reader

  2. Re:So how many frames will this get in Crysis? by julesh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yes, but it isn't the same type that D-Wave's processor solves, which is to say solving a particular class of differential equation in up to 16 8-bit variables.
    Most of the time spent in ray tracing is actually in database searching (finding objects that a ray intersects with), which can be sped up by a quantum algorithm, but it isn't one that can be implemented on D-Wave's machine.