SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
D-Wave Systems Inc. has announced that it has built a quantum annealer with over 1000 qubits. Previously, D-Wave promised to deliver 1152 qubit systems in March 2015.
D-Wave's quantum computer runs a quantum annealing algorithm to find the lowest points, corresponding to optimal or near optimal solutions, in a virtual "energy landscape." Every additional qubit doubles the search space of the processor. At 1000 qubits, the new processor considers 21000 possibilities simultaneously, a search space which dwarfs the 2512 possibilities available to the 512-qubit D-Wave Two. In fact, the new search space contains far more possibilities than there are particles in the observable universe.
The new processors comprise over 128,000 Josephson junctions (tunnel junctions with superconducting electrodes) in a 6-metal layer planar process with 0.25µm features, believed to be the most complex superconductor integrated circuits ever built.
The press release goes on to explain that the new generation of D-Wave processors runs at a 40% colder temperature (closer to absolute zero than before), reduces noise levels, and allows for "new modes of use."
A blog post explains that specific delivered systems will vary in qubit count, but should have around 1152 qubits.
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Informative) by mr_mischief on Tuesday June 23 2015, @06:23PM
The summary and article at least don't claim full quantum computing. It's a quantum annealer, which lots of experts have said their previous products were. Quantum annealing is as I understand it quite useful, but it's not everything a general quantum computer could be capable of doing. That said, a classical computer with lots of vector cores and a good algorithm often was able to keep up with their 512-bit one. Maybe their 1000-bit one will test out better against competition.