
World’s first commercial quantum computer sold to Lockheed Martin - malvosenior
http://venturebeat.com/2011/05/27/first-quantum-computer-sold/
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sbierwagen
D-Wave has a long, long history of making grandiose claims and completely
failing to back them up.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems#Criticism>

All this press release proves is that they got a defense contractor to spend
$10 million dollars.

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cheez
I worked with someone who worked there. It's not all bullshit but one of the
founders has got big dreams/plans and so comes off as a bullshit artist. Even
my former colleague says he thought a lot of it was a little iffy but he never
doubted they'd eventually get there. The stories were awesome.

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Dabacon
The D-wave machine is different from a general purpose quantum computer which
is why it can have many more qubits than the more traditional approach that
you are most like to have heard of in the press. That said no one knows what
the power of this type of machine is and calling in a quantum computer is
probably stretching it a bit. Here are some details for those interested:
[http://www.quora.com/Is-the-D-Wave-One-a-true-quantum-
comput...](http://www.quora.com/Is-the-D-Wave-One-a-true-quantum-
computer/answer/Dave-Bacon-1)

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foob
Two months ago we had a story that 14 qubits was the largest quantum computer
yet (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2404470>). This one now has 128? Is
this just a money difference, was this a huge engineering breakthrough, or is
there something else going on here?

~~~
mturmon
There's something else going on here. The one-line explanation is that true QC
requires quantum entanglement to be preserved, for reasonably long time
scales, across all qubits. It's not believed that the D-Wave 128-bit machine
does this, although the 8-bit one seems to.

Here's the opinion of an independent critic:

[http://blogs.forbes.com/alexknapp/2011/05/24/q-and-a-with-
pr...](http://blogs.forbes.com/alexknapp/2011/05/24/q-and-a-with-prof-scott-
aaronson-on-d-waves-quantum-computer/)

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andrewcross
I'd love to know how many people in the world actually understand quantum
computing with reasonable depth. My bet is less than 500. I will be the first
to confess that I have no idea what they are talking about most of the time.

~~~
bdhe
Here are a couple of articles on the announcement by Scott Aaronson and Dave
Bacon (professors at MIT and U Washington).

[http://blogs.forbes.com/alexknapp/2011/05/24/q-and-a-with-
pr...](http://blogs.forbes.com/alexknapp/2011/05/24/q-and-a-with-prof-scott-
aaronson-on-d-waves-quantum-computer/)

[http://www.quora.com/Is-the-D-Wave-One-a-true-quantum-
comput...](http://www.quora.com/Is-the-D-Wave-One-a-true-quantum-computer)

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bmohlenhoff
Scott Aaronson is basically THE go-to guy for anything involving complexity
theory or quantum computing. His explanations are phenomenal and his blog is
usually full of easily understood information. He posted something a few weeks
ago about the D-wave situation and pointed to that article he did for Forbes.

<http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=639>

~~~
Locke1689
I wouldn't say Aaronson is the premier expert on computational complexity.
That would probably be Lance Fortnow who literally writes the blog on
computational complexity (<http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/>). RJ
Lipton is pretty notable, as well <http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/>.

~~~
count
He didn't suggest Aaronson was the premier expert, he suggested he was the
best person to go to for clear, easy to understand explanations (such as in
the Forbes piece linked).

These are completely different things.

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mr23
This kind of sounds like bs. For several years now quantum computers have had
a very low number of qubits, only incrementally increasing every once and a
while. Now this thing nearly 10x the qubits? I don't think so, such a
breakthrough would make much more news than this.

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jorangreef
This could pose a problem to the BitCoin money supply.

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senthilnayagam
Want to know if these quantum computers have any Operating system and what
Programing languages are used to build the programs

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necrodome
Its OS is built with alien technology (aka LISP)

[http://dwave.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/learning-to-program-
th...](http://dwave.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/learning-to-program-the-d-wave-
one-software-you-should-install-a-book-you-should-buy/#comment-21948)

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mw63214
Good to see this type news being shared publicly. What ever happened to Bob
Gelfond & MagiQ?

~~~
Dabacon
Still alive and kicking. There are also a few other quantum cryptograph
companies around including <http://www.idquantique.com/> and
<http://www.quintessencelabs.com/>

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juiceandjuice
The real kicker is programming it with punch cards.

~~~
IChrisI
It's hard because you need quantum punch cards.

~~~
chopsueyar
I have a feeling this will become a ThinkGeek product.

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nraynaud
wasn't D-wave a scam company?

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Devilboy
There are lots of people questioning whether their device is really a quantum
computer but D-Wave has published many papers in peer-reviewed literature and
so just calling them a 'scam company' is a bit strong. We'll see soon enough
once more people get their hands on these devices. If they really are a 'scam
company' they won't last long now that they're shipping actual hardware.

