
D-Wave Computer's Solution Raises More Questions - nkurz
http://www.insidescience.org/content/d-wave-computers-solution-raises-more-questions/1453
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nnq
How about the more practical question: does it solve any classes of problems
faster than an equivalently priced classic computer? What are these problems?

...if they don't come up with answers to this questions that are easy for
business persons to understand, then we can only think that they are playing
"fake it 'till we make it" on US gov's money. And if, god forbid, they don't
make it, we'll be in for a "quantum computing winter(s)" just like we had the
"AI winter(s)" because of smart assholes that played a similar game... and boy
we have a lot to "thank" them for!

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OvidNaso
If the D-Wave is actually using quantum annealing for it's algorithms, how is
it playing "fake it till we make it" simply by not having optimized its output
to be currently faster than classical systems? I think it's pretty easy to see
how the government and private institutions that are purchasing D-Wave Two's
(universities and research divisions) see them as potentially great tools
separate from their processing output. Business people are a separate entity
and I would be surprised, and doubtful of their acumen, if any were actually
purchasing any.

 _If_ they turn out to be quantum in origin, I think you are way off base in
this prediction.

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mitmatt
It's not able to do full quantum annealing; it's only able to use stoquastic
Hamiltonians on a fixed topology. Even if truly quantum effects were present
(which is unclear at the moment, see Smolin and Smith arxiv posts), it's not
known to be a useful quantum computing model. So it's not just an issue of
"optimizing output".

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devx
> One researcher did find D-Wave performed 3600 times faster than a classical
> device.

Well, that was done with the 128-qubit version, right? And now they have one
that is _2^384 faster_ than that one, so we'll see what happens next.

If it was the 512-qubit one, then we'll need to wait for the 2048-qubit D-Wave
Three that should come out in 2015 (they seem to double the qubits every year,
but only release a new model every 2 years or so). That one should be 2^1536
faster than the current model.

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IanCal
Just like 64 bit computers are twice as fast as 32 bit computers, right?

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gphilip
More like 64 bit computers are 2^32 times as fast as 32 bit computers.

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batgaijin
do people not understand that this is just fake it til you make it? it doesn't
matter if it's an emulator if they are paying the right people and working on
it. do you think reddit just hoped it would get better at posting as bots?
that's ridiculous.

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X4
hhahaha, this question is so ironic!! It's a Quantum Computer and it's not, at
the same time. hahaha :)

hang on: I know that they proved that it's a quantum computer, so this article
only criticizes the degree of it's Quantumcomputerness.

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woah
Curious as to why the quantumness matters.

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bnegreve
It is actually a very crucial question: If the D-Wave machine is a just
quantum computer emulator supported by classical hardware, we cannot expect
much improvement in the future due to the inherent limitations of classical
physics.

On the other hand, if it _does_ behave like a quantum computer, it may end up
being a lot faster than any classical computer.

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blackkettle
just curious but, why would you expect _any_ appreciable improvement from the
emulator version?

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nolite
You wouldn't, and right now, it's debatable whether there is any or not. Hence
the entire controversy

