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from the CQluaasnstiucmal-Superposition dept.
AnonTechie points us towards updates on the evaluation of D-Wave's annealing devices.
From Phys.org's reporting on the latest tests:
With cutting-edge technology, sometimes the first step scientists face is just making sure it actually works as intended. The USC Viterbi School of Engineering is home to the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center (QCC), a super-cooled, magnetically shielded facility specially built to house the first commercially available quantum computing processors; devices so advanced that there are only two in use outside the Canadian lab where they were built. The first one went to USC and Lockheed Martin, and the second to NASA and Google. Since USC's facility opened in October 2011, a key task for researchers has been to determine whether D-Wave processors operate as hoped using the special laws of quantum mechanics to offer potentially higher-speed processing, instead of operating in a classical, traditional way.
(Score: 1) by egcagrac0 on Thursday March 06 2014, @10:35AM
It doesn't matter what's inside the black box, or how it does what it does.
If the machine does what's expected - producing useful output from input at a desirable rate - it has value.
Unlike my sliderule, I may not understand all the goings-on inside my pocket calculator, but the thing gives me the right answers to the problems, and it seems to be faster to use.