Google and NASA Snap Up D-Wave Quantum Computer

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."

Comments

Or Not

[A10Mechanic]

Or Not. I can't tell.

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

We can solve those traveling salesman problems that have been plaguing our society for hundreds of years!

Price?

[Anonymous Coward]

The D-Wave 1 was approximately $10 million:

https://dwave.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/siri/

From a recent Financial Post article profiling D-Wave:

        If computers could learn, grow and evolve the same way humans can, the world would be a much better place, Dr. Geordie Rose argues. The co-founder and chief technology officer of Burnaby, B.C.-based quantum computing firm D-Wave Systems Inc. contends that humanity would gain unprecedented access to education, health care and information if only his company’s technology were more widely adopted. Having sold its first quantum computing system to Lockheed Martin Corp. for approximately $10-million, the doctor of theoretical physics spoke to Financial Post technology reporter Jameson Berkow about his plan to change the world. The following is an edited transcription of their conversation.

Re:What language do you write code in?

[Chrisq]

I'd be curious what computer language they use to program this thing.

Objective Quark.

Or C±±

Re:Quantum porn!

[Chrisq]

On your screen before you even thought of searching for it!

Quantum porn - you can't tell both what position they are in and how fast they are going at the same time

IEEE Spectrum apologised

[Simon321]

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)

Re:What language do you write code in?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be curious what computer language they use to program this thing.

Objective Quark.

Or C±±

Or subjective c

Re:Not a true quantum computer

[MozeeToby]

It's not a quantum computer, it's a quantum annealer. It can't run general purpose quantum computer algorithms like Shor's Algorithm but it can find the optimum values for a specific class of problems, the same ones that are sometimes solved with software simulations of quantum annealing appropriately enough. The latest research shows that it outperforms a regular computer by several orders of magnitude on those problems, but it remains to be seen if it performs better than an ASIC chip designed for the task.

Re:Welcome

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I for one welcome our new quantum computer overlords.

Don't hold your breath, I predict that there is a world market for maybe five such computers.

Re:What language do you write code in?

[Anonymous Coward]

Python, actually. The quantum part is treated like an oracle.

Re:What language do you write code in?

[Esteanil]

Python.

http://www.dwavesys.com/en/dev-tutorial-getting-started.html