
Lockheed Martin pays $10M for D-Wave's Quantum Computer - ricksta
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/technology/Quantum+computer+developed+Metro+Vancouver+wins+over/8202950/story.html
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adrianhoward
_"Quantum computers operate at speeds unattainable by even today’s most
powerful supercomputers, operations that are so fast, they can process
millions of calculations in a fraction of the months, even years, traditional
computers take"_

God _damn_ I hate bullshit lines like this used about QCs. The whole article
is gives the usual misleading impression of QCs being generically faster than
normal computers.

They're not.

They can answer _some_ problems much, much faster than traditional non-QC
computers because they are capable of running classes of algorithm that rely
on quantum effects.

Don't get me wrong - that's a pretty darn useful subset of problems... the
future of QCs is full of rosy cool stuff... but this isn't just like upping
the clock cycles of a CPU.

It doesn't make everything faster. Completely different classes of constraint
are being tweaked.

QCs aren't going to make everybody's laptop or smartphone rilly rilly fast.

~~~
ok_craig
Are there any sources you know of that discuss what kinds of problems can be
solved faster with quantum computing? I'm curious about them.

~~~
daeken
Wikipedia has a fairly decent list of quantum algorithms:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_algorithm> Shor's algorithm being one of
the standard examples of where quantum computing completely crushes classical
computing.

~~~
adrianhoward
In addition to the Wikipedia site <http://www.scottaaronson.com/> has a bunch
of useful stuff on his blog.

------
Xcelerate
D-Wave's advancements are very interesting to me for a few reasons. The first
is that initially many people suspected D-Wave was a scam, because the most
successful research efforts in quantum computing used just a few qubits, and
D-Wave claimed a massive improvement (something like 128 or 256). Scott
Aaronson (<http://www.scottaaronson.com>) was perhaps the most vocal critic.
Over the years, the criticism has softened, and D-Wave has managed to get a
paper or two into Nature. I think the truth of what they've achieved is
somewhat less than what their marketing machine would like to suggest, but
it's nevertheless very impressive (and D-Wave is certainly a place I'd like to
work at if I could).

To clarify, D-Wave has not developed a general-purpose quantum computer, and
in fact the term "general purpose" is kind of ill-defined for quantum
computing anyway. Right now, there are a lot of different quantum effects that
are used in different ways to accomplish specific tasks. I believe D-Wave's
device uses quantum annealing to solve certain optimization problems, but
someone check me if I'm wrong.

The little I do know about quantum computing relates to my area of study:
simulation. The computation required to exactly solve the Schrodinger equation
scales with 2^N for the number of particles (or whatever basis the equation is
set in). Even the largest supercomputers are incapable of doing more than a
few atoms [which, incidentally, is actually what I'm attempting to accomplish
right now for a project that I should be working on instead of posting on
here...] Anyway, with quantum computers, the scale would be O(N) instead of
O(2^N), so you could perform incredibly accurate simulations that reach
chemical accuracy. Chemical accuracy is kind of the holy grail of simulation,
because what it means is that you can predict actual, macroscopic chemical
properties of a variety of substances without doing any real-world experiments
whatsoever. I believe it has been accomplished for things like pure hydrogen
and quite a few bosonic systems (bosons are easier to simulate since they
don't suffer from the fermion sign problem -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_sign_problem>).

Anyway, I probably sound like I know more than I really do, but hopefully this
gives you an idea of what kind of applications a real, working quantum
computer could be used to achieve.

~~~
papaf
Out of interest, when the chemically accurate simulations are made are there
any surprises? Or do the estimations that are normally used good enough for
most purposes?

~~~
escherba
I'm not an expert on Comp Chem, but you might want to rephrase your question.
If the simulation is "chemically accurate", of course it will match the real-
world, by definition of "accurate"...

~~~
papaf
My understanding of these things is that the dynamics of the real world are
not easily measurable at this scale. An alternative is to simulate using using
packages such as Gromacs:

    
    
      http://www.gromacs.org/About_Gromacs
    

These packages are truly incredible but use relatively crude approximations
and are in wide use. It is possible to get a decent paper out that uses a
simulation as evidence to support an idea.

The aim of my question was to see if chemically accurate simulations come up
with significantly different answers or to see if the current way of doing
things is a good enough approximation.

~~~
hagy
You bring up an excellent point, papaf. The accuracy of the empirical force
fields used in molecular dynamics simulation engines (such as Gromacs) is a
hotly debated topic. Even without quantum computing the issue can be addressed
with conventional computers that perform quantum mechanical calculations on
interacting molecular fragments. The forces calculated from quantum mechanics
can then be compared with those calculated from molecular dynamics force
fields (as an example see Sherrill et al.
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jcc.21226/full> ). Such studied
have shown that current force fields fail to model certain chemical
interactions and need improved. Specifically, the underlying functional forms
used to model molecular forces need revised.

Currently such investigations are limited in scope by the large computational
resources required to perform a single quantum mechanical calculation on a
molecular fragment. With quantum computers, tens of thousands of such
calculations could be performed and the results could be used to optimize new
molecular force fields through multivariate regression.

~~~
Xcelerate
Nice to see another GT person on HN! (Did my undergrad there.) Have you worked
with Dr. Sherrill? It's funny you mention him; I was actually reading one of
his presentations on electron-electron correlation last night.

~~~
hagy
Cool. I'm a grad student in another chemistry theory group. Dr. Sherrill
definitely has the best notes on electronic structure calculations.

------
ibrahima
This part of the article makes me facepalm so hard, as someone who knows a
little about quantum computing and a lot more about computer vision:

> Quantum computers operate at speeds unattainable by even today’s most
> powerful supercomputers, operations that are so fast, they can process
> millions of calculations in a fraction of the months, even years,
> traditional computers take.

Quantum computers can carry out some algorithms which normal computers can't,
which can be much faster, but they're not usable for general computing so this
statement makes no sense.

> They can even be taught and can recognize objects in images, a task standard
> computers struggle with.

Er... what? I wouldn't say that standard computers can do vision easily, but
it's a problem of finding the right algorithms, not computing power.

------
anigbrowl
$10 million is _cheap_. True, it only does discrete optimization problems, but
I think you could make your money back in a few years years renting it out at
$5k/hour and consulting on translating problems to that domain.

Will some clients be wildly overpaying for something they could do equally
well on regular computers? Sure, and they'll love every $ of it because of the
bragging rights. Is this an efficient use of the hardware? Certainly not,
it'll probably be exploiting <1% of the system's potential. Doesn't matter.
People will frequently pay more for novelty than actual utility. If their
vanity subsidizes the tiny subset of research computation that would have
serious economic benefits, I call that a win-win.

------
waterlesscloud
So it's worth like 1/10th a Google employee.

------
anarchotroll
Lockheed had been working with D-Wave for a while. If they decided to actually
buy one of their computers, this probably means that they liked what they were
seeing.

~~~
dsl
This is the second one LMT has purchased. Which means they liked it enough to
buy the upgraded model.

------
mtgx
I wonder if Google will buy this version, too. I think they've been working
with D-wave for a few years now.

<http://phys.org/news180107947.html>

~~~
asafira
I can almost guarantee they will buy this version.

------
arianvanp
So I am in my final year of high school now, and I'm not studying physics next
year. The only thing about 'quantum physics' that we had was emission-spectra,
and light-interference. Quantum Physics sounds _Really_ interesting though, so
I would love if anyone could point me in the right direction with where and
how I start learning this stuff. Thanks:D

~~~
asafira
This is great to see! Of course, this stuff isn't easy to jump into, but I
recommend checking out some of the free online courses for something good.
Coursera once had a quantum computer course (!) taught by a pretty famous guy
in the field! It didn't have quantum mechanics as a prerequisite, either!

~~~
arianvanp
I will definitely check out the Coursera courses. thanks!

------
harichinnan
Did anyone try their developer portal. I'm all excited to hear that they'll
put up their quantum computer online after Beta.
<http://www.dwavesys.com/en/dev-portal.html>

------
LAMike
"500,000 times faster than its predecessor"

How much power do quantum computers use and when will they be affordable
enough to put in a smartphone/tablet?

And why isn't any other company doing this?

~~~
jd007
Quantum computers are still in its infancy, and a lot more work is needed
before we can even begin talking about practical, effective use. Consumer
market readiness is even further away.

It's probably not worthwhile for quantum computing chips to enter the consumer
market, because (AFAIK) quantum computers are only very good at solving a very
specific set of problems (e.g. integer factorization), but their advantages
over classical chips diminish (or even become negative) for general purpose
computation. Of course as quantum chips develop, quantum algorithms will
develop/evolve with them so that might change.

There have been some skepticism over whether their quantum computing chip (and
similar ones that other companies develop) is actually a quantum computer
(e.g. whether true quantum entanglement was observed).

There are other companies doing this, such as IBM.

~~~
LAMike
Could a quantum computer mine bitcoins?

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CurtMonash
I stopped reading when the article suggested that millions of calculations,
when done on other computers, take months.

~~~
sigkill
If you define one calculation as one instruction that is carried in a single
clock cycle, even the stupidly cheap Atmel chips (which power the Arduino)
runs at 16MHz, which is 16 million instructions per _second_.

------
Volpe
So does this mean Shor's Algorithm is going to kick in for real and ruin all
our securityz?

~~~
adrianhoward
_So does this mean Shor's Algorithm is going to kick in for real and ruin all
our securityz?_

Nope.

First, as I understand it, the D-Wave stuff isn't a system that can run
Shor's.

Second, Shor's only ruins security for a certain class of crypto algorithm.
There are already algorithms that exist today that a proof against it (e.g the
McEliece cryptosystem <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McEliece_cryptosystem>).

Third, if you're really worried about the man cracking your s3cr3t stuff with
quantum computers go pick the right cryptosystem ;-) Plenty of symmetric
encryption systems that only get their key lengths reduced (effectively
halved) by Grover's algorithm.

~~~
daeken
People tend to equate asymmetric crypto with the likes of RSA; systems where
the efficient factoring of large numbers is a death sentence. But there's a
whole slew of other asymmetric cryptosystems without such properties, e.g.
elliptic-curve cryptography.

~~~
forTheRecord
Shors algorithm also breaks elliptic-curve cryptography.

~~~
daeken
Oh, wow, I've never seen the variant that breaks ECC; that's really quite
awesome. Time to read some papers!

~~~
adrianhoward
Nielsen, Michael A.; Chuang, Isaac L. Quantum Computation and Quantum
Information. p. 202 is what you want ;)

