Quantum Computing And The D-Wave

by Justin Danneman

D-Wave Systems, Inc. is a quantum computing company, based in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. D-Wave is the first company in the world to sell quantum computers.

The D-Wave One was built on early prototypes such as D-Wave’s Orion Quantum Computer. The prototype was a 16-qubit quantum annealing processor, demonstrated on February 13, 2007 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. D-Wave demonstrated what they claimed to be a 28-qubit quantum annealing processor on November 12, 2007.  In order to understand the origins of much of the controversy around the D-Wave approach, it is important to note that the origins of the D-Wave approach to quantum computation arose not from the conventional quantum information field, but from experimental condensed matter physics.

On May 11, 2011, D-Wave Systems announced D-Wave One, described as “the world’s first commercially available quantum computer”, operating on a 128-qubit chipset using quantum annealing (a general method for finding the global minimum of a function by a process using quantum fluctuations) to solve optimization problems. In May 2013, a collaboration between NASA, Google and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) launched a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab based on the D-Wave Two 512-qubit quantum computer that would be used for research into machine learning, among other fields of study.

On August 20, 2015, D-Wave Systems announced the general availability of the D-Wave 2X system, a 1000+ qubit quantum computer. This was followed by an announcement on September 28, 2015 that it had been installed at the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA Ames Research Center.

In January 2017, D-Wave has released the D-Wave 2000Q and Qbsolv. Qbsolv is a piece of open-source software that solves QUBO problems on both company’s quantum processors and classic hardware architectures. ~ Wikipedia

So what are quantum computers and why are financial giants and intelligence communities so interested in obtaining access to them?

Computers as of now, or what may soon be nicknamed ‘classic’ computers, operate utilizing a language of 1’s and 0’s.

On or off.

These are called bits. It takes 8 bits to store a single number.

Quantum computers leverage the laws of quantum mechanics to do a computation.

This means they can be a 1 or a 0 at the same time.

They utilize what are called qubits (‘cube’ bits) to store information.

Whereas 8 bits could only store 1 number, 8 qubits can store 256 numbers. Each qubit you add, doubles its storage capacity.

By the time you reach 500, it can store more numbers than there are atoms in the visible universe.

D-Wave currently runs at 2,000 qubits!

While a classic computer searches each file at a time, a quantum computer searches all files at once.

“At the heart of quantum mechanics is a rule that sometimes governs politicians or CEOs – as long as no one is watching, anything goes.” ― Lawrence M. Krauss

Superposition: When a particle can be in two or more places at the same time.

Okay think of it this way. If you are at point A and you need to get to point B, you could theoretically take a variety paths to get there. In some cases, an infinite amount.

While you must take each path one at a time, a particle, since it can be in two places at once, can take all paths simultaneously.

Quantum Entanglement: Two particles, no matter how far apart you separate them, will react based upon what happens to each other.

If you do something to one particle, the other particle knows about it and reacts to it, but only if the observers know about it.

The other particle has been shown to defy time.

Quantum Tunneling: Once connected by quantum entanglement, particles can move freely in between both superpositioned states, or essentially … universes.

This is often referred to as coherent evolution.

So in order to harness these quantum abilities, there is one catch … and one major side effect. 

Temperature gets in the way … and dipping in between dimensions tends to delve into realms very few of us are truly ready to accept.

Understand, we see the particles at both points, just not what happens in between. 

This is one of the reasons why Einstein dubbed this phenomenon “spooky action at a distance.”

An inter-dimensional interference point … a point where one could intervene, hypothetically.

So How Does D-Wave Make it Work?

The hotter the temperatures, the more movement a particle exhibits.

Therefore, they must operate at the coldest of temperatures possible, optimally, one billionth of a degree.

Or basically, as D-Wave likes to boast, one of the coldest places in the universe.

Bear in mind the computer inside this thing is a chip.

Essentially, D-Wave has figured out how to slow down particles to quantum world friendly temperatures, thus able to harness quantum traits to conduct computations.

These particles, in order to completely slow down, must also exist in a magnetic vacuum, much like how particle accelerators work.

So Why are the Intelligence, Government and Financial Industries so Heavily Invested?

The answer is simple: Big Data.

Everything you have ever done online, or what can be tracked in some sort of connected database, is accessible and quantifiable.

Information has truly become power.