D-Wave Systems has released a Quantum Annealer with over 5000 qubits. They have over 250 applications that can be run on the system.
The chip uses over 1 million superconducting Josephson junctions.
D-Wave was doubling qubits every year for the first decade but have been doubling every two years over the past seven years. There is no specific reason for 2013 to be a breakpoint in the slope. A few more product releases from D-Wave will show how closely Quantum machines copy Moore’s Law.
The previous chip had 2000 qubits and 6000 connections but the new chip has over 5000 qubits and 35000 connections. Higher levels of connectivity required a new fabrication process.
Usable Via Amazon Braket
The new D-Wave Advantage quantum processing unit (QPU) has more than 5000 qubits with 15-way connectivity to enable researchers and developers to explore larger, more complex quantum optimization problems.
Amazon Braket provides access to two D-Wave QPUs: the Advantage QPU and the existing D-Wave 2000Q QPU. The new Advantage QPU can handle larger problems with fewer physical qubits.
SOURCES- Steve Jurvetson Flickr, D-Wave systems, Amazon, Ars Technica
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Yes. And they haven’t even shown that their quantum step is any better than a classical computer running a good heuristic algorithm, such as deep learning.
There are currently no theorems showing a case where an annealer is better than classical. And there doesn’t seem to be any strong empirical evidence that an annealer is better at heuristic guessing than classical.
Right. Might be the reason i.e. Rigetti is indicating 64K for 10qb, which is 12 of the theoretical capacity.
Remember that D-wave has come out with graphs previously predicting they would achieve universe beating numbers several years ago.
They called that graph "Rose's law" too.
Not quite so for DWave because not all the bits are entangled together. Looks like each bit can communicate with 15 other bits.
I don't know if DWave is still saying that the solution their machine provides requires refinement by classical algorithms.
Translation: it gives a locally optimal solution, not a globally optimal solution.
So it has uses, but it would seem that the uses involve making classical algorithms better instead of replacing classical algorithms.
The difference is that we know that a large quantum computer would be able to solve some problems faster than a classical computer. But we don’t yet know of any problems where a large quantum annealer would be faster than a classical computer.
So a quantum computer with 50 qubits is pretty exciting. But a quantum annealer with 5000 qubits is only mildly interesting.
But maybe someday, someone will find a problem where quantum annealers are useful. I hope so. Lots of labs are buying them to see if they can find one.
Each qubit doubles the performance. So, 3qb=2^3=8bits. 10qb=2^10=1MB. 100qb gives 30-number digit. For comparison, humanity has reached zetabyte (21 digit) capacities in 2016.
So.. How powerful is this "quantum annealer"? When other groups reach ~5-10 qubits in other technologies, it's a big deal. But I don't see anybody else other than nextbigfuture even writing about D-wave products/prototypes. Which makes me think that each of their qubits is somehow a lot less powerful. Right?