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posted by LaminatorX on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:30AM   Printer-friendly
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.

(Background at Time, for those unfamiliar.)

 
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  • (Score: 1) by tibman on Friday March 07 2014, @01:52AM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 07 2014, @01:52AM (#12390)

    Don't get too excited. A single core of a mid-grade desktop processor can outperform D-Wave (one and two). Imagine what $10mil could buy you instead of a D-Wave and i think you can understand people's hesitation. I'm not saying it doesn't have promise or isn't quantum. I'm just saying that it is a HUGE waste of money for practical use. I can completely see academic use though where you can poke and prod the thing to get something non-classical out of it.

    http://www.archduke.org/stuff/d-wave-comment-on-co mparison-with-classical-computers/ [archduke.org]

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