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 ngarrang on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:20PM
Do not underestimate the value of mind-share. If D-Wave can be touted as the first company to successfully harness q-computing for real-world tasks, that is a huge boon for future investment and PR. The first to market is not always the most successful, as history has shown us, but it can still lead to a lot of early success and potentially a rich buy-out for the owners.