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D-Wave Previews Quantum Computing Platform With Over 5,000 Qubits (venturebeat.com)

Posted by msmash on from the pushing-the-limits dept.

An anonymous reader writes: D-Wave Systems, one of the handful firms that is building a quantum computer, today unveiled the roadmap for its 5,000-qubit quantum computer. Components of D-Wave's next-generation quantum computing platform will come to market between now and mid-2020 via ongoing quantum processing unit (QPU) and cloud-delivered software updates. The complete system will be available through cloud access and for on-premise installation in mid-2020.

4 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Do these machines actually do anything useful? by jythie · · Score: 4, Funny

    They generate hype and sweet sweet VC dollars?

    Unless things have improved, their systems are still slower and more expensive than solving the same problem on general digital computers, and probably still slower than using analog computers.

  2. When this is turned on... by rnturn · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... the stars will all start going out.

    --
    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
    1. Re:When this is turned on... by ClickOnThis · · Score: 4, Informative

      ... the stars will all start going out.

      ...why?

      This is why.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  3. Re:Expand all othello games then by jouassou · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As far as I know, D-Wave doesn't make any universal quantum computers, but only quantum annealers. That means that they can solve some optimization problems on their machine, but they can't actually run e.g. Shor's integer factorization algorithm. As far as I'm aware, the current record for universal quantum computers is Google's Bristlecone, which has 72 qubits with a single-qubit error rate of ~0.1%. For comparison, most quantum error correction require an error rate of below 0.001% or so, and running Shor's algorithm to break 2048-bit RSA encryption might require up to 10,000 qubits. It'll probably be a while until they'll find those primes for you.