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!

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: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.