
D-Wave Systems Previews 2000-Qubit Quantum System - jonbaer
http://www.dwavesys.com/press-releases/d-wave-systems-previews-2000-qubit-quantum-system
======
RangerScience
This is a good overview: [http://www.dwavesys.com/tutorials/background-
reading-series/...](http://www.dwavesys.com/tutorials/background-reading-
series/introduction-d-wave-quantum-hardware)

Inside is also a link to the whitepaper on how to program the DWave, which has
a lot more detail on "ok, but what does that mean I can do with it, and how?".
More or less, you need to map your problem space to the functioning of the
DWave (a series of weights), and then you need to map the answer space of the
DWave (out-state of each qubit) back to your problem space. The DWave doesn't
actually return a canonical answer, but rather a bundle of statistics for each
qubit, from which you then determine your answer (say, by taking the average).

Some things to remember, aside from the debate about whether it's actually a
QC and actually uses entanglement to produce answers:

1) All 2k qubits are NOT entangled with each other The qubits are grouped into
cells, and the cells have a coupling between them, but each qubit does not
(directly) interact with all other qubits. This is a large part of why it's
not a "general" quantum computer; it's more like an ASIC.

2) You program in "similarity" and "dissimilarity" to neighboring qubits, and
an initial weighting. Each qubit in the dwave has some programmed possibility
of being 1 or 0, and of being the same or different from each neighbor.
"Running" the calculation more or less applies all these weights, and then you
look at the resulting state.

3) The "answer" is actually the statistics on multiple measurements. After
programming the weights, you run the machine, and get out an answer. You do
this 50, 100, whatever, times, and now you have statistics on the state of
each qubit. From this you determine your answer; AFAIK, usually you just take
the average.

~~~
partisan
Thank you for making this easier to comprehend for the lay programmer.

~~~
RangerScience
You're welcome! Despite all the debate, it IS super cool, even if it's just
because they're literally making a bunch of parts super-cool.

But it's not as awesome as scifi QCs :/

------
mroll
I'll be looking forward to reading Aaronson on this

~~~
StefanKarpinski
tl;dr: "No, this still isn't real quantum computing in any way that we can
measure." But yes, I'm looking forward to it also.

------
CoryG89
Does anyone know if anyone actually uses these D-Wave systems in production
for practical applications? Are there any applications for which these are
already faster/cheaper than traditonal computers?

~~~
vonmoltke
Lockheed has one in Fort Worth. Best I can tell they want to run aerodynamics
simulations on it.

I actually interviewed for a field engineer position with D-Wave embedded at
Lockheed in Fort Worth. Apparently I wasn't smart enough for them because they
went radio silent after the phone interview.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
> Best I can tell they want to run aerodynamics simulations on it.

I'm a CFD guy and I have absolutely no clue how anyone expects to get any
aerodynamics simulation results out of that with anything resembling
usefulness.

Really, even a super-simple 2D wing profile simulation that you can run in
milliseconds even in javascript will require data storage that's absolutely
massive compared to 2000 qubits.

~~~
arcanus
Also CFD guy, completely agree with the above.

Quantum computers have several algorithms for various applications, such
ashort shors for factorization. Not aware of any algos for CFD.

Perhaps a rarefied gas dynamics, bolts man distribution sort of application
could be created? At least in some cases quantum mechanical effects are
significant...

------
mathgenius
Here is an article from the google quantum team:
[https://research.googleblog.com/2015/12/when-can-quantum-
ann...](https://research.googleblog.com/2015/12/when-can-quantum-annealing-
win.html)

From my understanding, these things do beat classical computers, but no one
cares because the problems they are solving is not useful for anything.

~~~
dj-wonk
Can you clarify what you mean by "not useful for anything"? "Anything" tends
to be a rather strong modifier.

------
M_Grey
Has D-Wave's systems ever actually been shown to be "quantum systems?"

~~~
johncolanduoni
If you mean in a "quantum computer" sense, no. They're slower than classical
alternatives for sure, and significant entanglement has yet to be
demonstrated. Even theoretically, D-Wave has yet to produce any reasons to
believe the mechanism of operation is quantum in any significant way.

Remember your CPU requires quantum mechanics to explain its operation (above
and beyond "that's why the atoms don't implode"), so "it does quantum things"
does not a quantum computer make.

~~~
M_Grey
Yes, I meant it as in, "Processes qubits with entangled ensembles of photons".
Thanks for the answer, it's what I remembered from the last time I'd read
about them, but that was a while ago.

------
mastazi
From the article:

> D-Wave’s quantum system runs a quantum annealing algorithm to find the
> lowest points in a virtual energy landscape representing a computational
> problem to be solved.

In statistics and machine learning, this is great for finding optima in cost
functions.

The ideas in this paper are related:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.3489v2](https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.3489v2)

~~~
AstralStorm
By great you mean "slower than same known algorithm implemented in modern
hardware", yes?

Simulated annealing they do is not even the best algorithm to search nonlinear
solution spaces.

~~~
mastazi
You are right, what I actually meant is "great once quantum computing becomes
a commercially viable route" :-)

Regarding the second line of your comment: I don't have comprehensive
knowledge about the possible alternatives, could you direct me towards some
sources?

~~~
acqq
Discussed in 2015:

[http://news.mit.edu/2015/3q-scott-aaronson-google-quantum-
co...](http://news.mit.edu/2015/3q-scott-aaronson-google-quantum-computing-
paper-1211)

"In the current model of the D-Wave chip, there are 1,000 or so qubits
[quantum bits], but they’re organized into clusters of eight qubits each."

"what the Google paper finds is that Selby’s algorithm, which runs on a
classical computer, totally outperforms the D-Wave machine on all the
instances they tested."

Now they've just made a machine of twice as much qubits but is there any
performance advantage compared to the code run on the classical computer?

~~~
mastazi
Thanks for the link + explanation! Now that I saw the article, I vaguely
remember the story but, at the time, I did not do any further reading.

------
zqfm
Is there any kind of simulator that I could run on my classical hardware to
get some experience programming with this kind of thing?

~~~
proksoup
There are qc simulators online like
[http://www.davyw.com/quantum/](http://www.davyw.com/quantum/) but my naive
understanding is that dwave is a bit different from this.

It might be the same kind of thing though ... I'm curious if it is.

------
lohankin
Would be good to know what "up to" means in "up to 1000 times faster". By any
chance, isn't it the same "up to" as in "you can win up to 100 million dollars
in a lottery"?

------
atemerev
Here are Google Research results:
[https://research.googleblog.com/2015/12/when-can-quantum-
ann...](https://research.googleblog.com/2015/12/when-can-quantum-annealing-
win.html?m=1)

------
djrjfndnfhf
Now this is starting to get interesting. 2000 qubits is where it starts being
applicable to meaningful real-world combinatoric optimization problems. I
would kill to have access to one of these machines for my research...

Edit: What's the beef?

~~~
gravypod
If your research is in breaking cryptography I'm sure the NSA would love to
assist you. It's not like the NSA is hard pressed for cash.

~~~
djrjfndnfhf
Unfortunately the NSA doesn't do a lot of evolutionary structural optimization
:/

~~~
valhalla
Could a D-Wave be used to perform Shor's algorithm? I remember reading a long
time ago that In-Q-Tel and an unnamed 3-letter agency had invested in D-Wave

~~~
AstralStorm
It cannot. It can only run simulated annealing and return probabilistic
results.

------
adamnemecek
I'm surprised that none of the quantum computing companies I've seen are
talking about moving from copper wires to optical wires. It feels a bit like
putting a Ferrari engine into a VW Bug.

~~~
krastanov
Because of thermal noise these things are very cold. At that point the wires
are superconducting so you need not worry about that type of losses. None of
the advantages of optical processing translate from the classical regime to
the quantum.

~~~
mtgx
Not all quantum computers use superconducting qubits:

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/features/dt10-quantum-
computing...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/features/dt10-quantum-computing-
will-make-your-pc-look-like-a-graphing-calculator/)

------
iplaw
Has anyone shown that this isn't simply a hollow black box with a slightly
outdated conventional computer inside? Based on performance metrics alone,
this would seem likely.

------
dmfdmf
I get the feeling (and its more likely) that D-Wave has solved the P=NP
question in the affirmative and have polynomial equations to solve NP
problems. As far as I know, getting qubits to stay coherent is a difficult,
unsolved problem as the number of qubits increases. Of the QC research that I
have read about they are using a handful of qubits to factor really small
numbers like 15. Nobody, at least publicly, is even working with 100's of
qubits let alone 2K.

To avoid public disclosure that P=NP (and losing out on any way to monetize
their discovery) they are hiding their work behind a "quantum computer" which
is a vague and sophisticated enough cover (nobody really understands quantum
physics) to dupe some customers while the P equations run in ring-zero of a
normal CPU. What would be interesting is to read the sales contracts for these
machines. My guess is they are written in such a way that D-Wave makes no
promises or guarantee that they are actually using qubits to solve customer's
problems, just that they promise to solve customer's NP problems with D-Wave
computers, regardless of the method. Moreover, I'd bet that the language
states that the machines sold are "equivalent" to a 2000 qubit computer and
not necessarily a 2KQbit processors. In this way D-wave is off the legal hook
if/when the NP=P solution is revealed by D-Wave or others. My second guess is
that these sales contracts are protected by NDA's.

~~~
johncolanduoni
Theres a lot of reasons this isn't possible, let alone probable.

1\. The "algorithms" are input by the users, not dwave. Moreover, you don't
even have a way to input an NP-complete problem. You can only input the setup
for a very specific type of optimization problem.

2\. You're not comparing like with like. Even Dwave doesn't claim to have a
general, gate based quantum computer like the sub-100 gate quantum computers
you're talking about. The also don't claim coherent entanglement of all 2k
qubits; they've still failed to convince anybody more than a handful get
entangled together coherently during the operation of the device.

3\. The dwave has yet to beat a laptop at any problem, let alone the NP-
complete problems of their customers. The only people who buy D-Wave systems
are those doing pure research.

4\. The sales contracts aren't protected by NDAs. I've talked to people who
work on Lockheed's D-Wave (at USC), and all their investigations are freely
available on the Arxiv.

~~~
dmfdmf
Okay, so where is the beef? u/krastanov blasted me too but the question
remains, what are they doing? How can they sell single computer if your point
#3 is true? I would think that researchers must be smart enough to sniff out a
scam so I have to think DW must offering _some thing_ new, different or
superior to standard CPUs or processing -- even if primitive and expensive.
Moreover, if your point #2 is true then how can they claim to be offering a 2K
qbit computer? It makes no sense as long as words have real meaning.

Thanks for point #4, I will investigate.

~~~
johncolanduoni
Look at it from the perspective of the people who have bought their computers
(e.g. Google, Lockheed). Suppose there's any remote chance this is the first
step towards scalable quantum computing. If that's the case, getting your
researchers in on the ground floor could lead to what would likely be one of
the most valuable pieces of IP since the transistor. D-Wave's patents might
not cover it since their patents describe devices that don't really appear to
work, and you're big enough to buy them if they do. Governments, every
physical science, and plenty of firms big data would be dying to get their
hands on your devices.

Now look at the cost of the D-Wave. A few million dollars, compared to the
trillions you could make just in licensing fees if it pans out and you were
the ones to crack the code. Considering how deep these companies' pockets are,
wouldn't you take that bet? I would, and I side with the evaluations of some
of the biggest D-Wave skeptics in academia.

