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posted by on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the able-to-solve-the-travelling-salesman-problem-in-just-6-years dept.

Google, NASA, and Universities Space Research Association (USRA) run a joint research lab called the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL). That partnership has used a 512-qubit D-Wave Two quantum annealer, upgraded to the 1,152-qubit D-Wave 2x, and is now upgrading again to the company's latest D-Wave 2000Q system (2048 qubits):

Google, NASA, and the USRA are now buying the latest generation D-Wave quantum computer, as well, to further explore its potential. The new D-Wave 2000Q is not just up to 1,000 times faster than the previous generation, but it also has better controls, allowing QuAIL to tweak it for its algorithms. QuAIL is now looking at developing machine learning algorithms that can take advantage of D-Wave's latest quantum annealing computer.

[...] D-Wave also announced that it will help the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) establish a quantum computing research center for defense and intelligence purposes. D-Wave's role will be to aid the Virginia Tech staff in developing applications and software tools for its quantum annealing computers. [...] Because D-Wave is not a universal quantum computer, like what Google and IBM plan to build over the next few years, it is not expected to be useful in cracking encryption. Virginia Tech plans to also focus on developing machine learning algorithms for the D-Wave computers.

Previously: Trees Are the New Cats: D-Wave Used for Machine Vision


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  • (Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:42AM

    by stormwyrm (717) on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:42AM (#479255) Journal

    The D-Wave isn’t the sort of quantum computer that can do the kinds of calculations necessary to implement something like Shor’s Factoring Algorithm. It is capable of quantum annealing [wikipedia.org] which can be used to solve certain classes of optimisation problems only. It is not a universal quantum computer and cannot be used to simulate one, and you’d need such a thing to be able to factor, compute discrete logarithms, or do fast unordered searches using quantum algorithms. Whether D-Wave’s offerings can actually be classified as true quantum computers is debatable as is whether there is any real speed-up in using their gear that cannot be achieved using classical computers and algorithms.

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