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D-Wave Large-Scale Quantum Chip Validated, Says USC Team

An anonymous reader writes "A team of scientists says it has verified that quantum effects are indeed at work in the D-Wave processor, the first commercial quantum optimization computer processor. The team demonstrated that the D-Wave processor behaves in a manner that indicates that quantum mechanics has a functional role in the way it works. The demonstration involved a small subset of the chip's 128 qubits, but in other words, the device appears to be operating as a quantum processor."

4 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The question is by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wrong kind of quantum computer. This does quantum annealing.

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    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  2. Re:Was anyone really surprised by this? by timeOday · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, I can tell you that no amount of computation will help for a one-time pad. That would be essentially the same as decrypting an empty sheet of paper. There is no information in either half of an OTP duo; only in the differences between the halves.

  3. Re:It Still Doesn't Mean Much... by firewrought · · Score: 4, Informative

    Why would a quantum computer would reduce the O notation?

    Because it's running in multiple worlds simultaneously? It's not just using 1's and 0's but superpositions of the two that are effectively in both states at once. Heh... I'm really don't understand this stuff, but the big deal about quantum computing is that it will make some previously intractable (e.g., non-polynomial) problems accessible to us. All problems in complexity class BQP become, essentially, polynomial on a quantum computer. If you've got enough qbits, among other things.

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    -1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
  4. Re:I don't get it. by the+gnat · · Score: 4, Informative

    I am pretty sure that this 7-month-old arXiv preprint corresponds to the Nature Communications paper. The titles and author lists are identical, but the abstract deviates, so who knows what changes it went through in revision (I don't have access to the official paper either, even at the university where I work). But presumably it covers the same ground, and it looks like all of the figures from the official are in the preprint.

    (Yo, fuck Nature Publishing Group.)