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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: 2, Insightful) by glyph on Thursday March 06 2014, @03:28AM
Think of something like deep space probes or even the Large Hadron Collider. These are not "products" in the typical consumer sense. You won't know if they are "fit for purpose" until after you test them.
(Score: 1) by acapulco on Thursday March 06 2014, @12:24PM
I think the LHC example is good analogy for this. Precisely my point is that, as far as I know a lot of published research was done before the LHC was approved to be built. Of course no one could be sure if it could work or even if they could actually build it, however there was a lot of research on the matter and thus the people involved could say that it was very likely that it could be both built and it would work.
With D-Wave's product there wasn't (to my knowledge) that much of published research, and that's why I had the doubt.