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Google and NASA Snap Up D-Wave Quantum Computer

Posted by Unknown on from the at-least-we-think-they-did dept.

ananyo writes "D-Wave, the small company that sells the world's only commercial quantum computer, has just bagged an impressive new customer: a collaboration between Google, NASA and the non-profit Universities Space Research Association. The three organizations have joined forces to install a D-Wave Two, the computer company's latest model, in a facility launched by the collaboration — the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA's Ames Research Center. The lab will explore areas such as machine learning — useful for functions such as language translation, image searches and voice-command recognition. The Google-led collaboration is only the second customer to buy computer from D-Wave — Lockheed Martin was the first."

1 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. IEEE Spectrum apologised by Simon321 · · Score: 5, Informative

    IEEE Spectrum apologised for that article:

    http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/computing/hardware/big-win-for-the-losers-at-dwave

    It's a quantum computer all right, just not a universal quantum computer. But it should still show quantum speedups for discrete optimization problems.

    http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/04/further-proof-for-controversial-quantum-computer.html

    So far, tests have been very promising:

    http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829173.500-commercial-quantum-computer-leaves-pc-in-the-dust.html

    If it continues to speed up like this, there are some very exciting times ahead of us!

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/8054771535/ (Rose's Law, the quantum computer equivalent of Moore's Law)