D-Wave sells its first quantum computing system to Lockheed Martin

[CentralDogma]

Lockheed Martin Corporation, US's biggest military contractor, has signed an agreement to purchase a quantum computing system from D-Wave Systems Inc., a report on the company website said.

Both the companies have decided to collaborate on a computing platform which will be based on quantum annealing processor to deal with Lockheed Martin's most complex problems. The multi-year contract will come with the system, associated professional services and maintenance.

"D-Wave is thrilled to establish a strategic relationship with Lockheed Martin Corporation," said Vern Brownell, D-Wave's President and Chief Executive Officer, in a report. "Our combined strength will provide capacity for innovation needed to tackle important unresolved computational problems of today and tomorrow. Our relationship will allow us to significantly advance the potential of quantum computing."

D-Wave's systems involve physics of quantum mechanics and solve problems such as financial risk analysis, affinity mapping and sentiment analysis, object recognition in images, software verification and validation, compressed sensing and bioinformatics.

D-Wave was first featured in May in the British scientific journal Nature, where its research on quantum annealing was published.

About D-Wave:

The world's first commercial quantum computer has been released by D-Wave systems, a quantum computing company, based in Burnaby, British Columbia, a report in Digit magazine said.

The company reportedly undertook 12 years of research and registered more than 50 patents and filed 100 more.

Labeled 'D-Wave One', the system is a high performing computing system which has been designed to encounter industrial complexities which are often faced by Fortune 500 companies, academic institutions and governments.

The current superconducting 128-qubit (quantum bit) processor chip is placed in a cryogenic system inside a 10-sq. meter protected space whose chief task is distinct optimization. The system costs about $10 million.

The processor, Rainier, employs quantum annealing, a process which allows the user to mould and distort the quantum particle energy levels greater than any other system, to solve complex problems.

The process enables the formation of integrated circuits which have similar operating style as that of conventional silicon. The processor can be programmed using a python programming language.

D-Wave has established a process that allows a quick method called 'snapshotting' which eventually becomes like the frame of a movie. Watching the result, the system can finally examine inside the quantum black box and see whether the quantum computing can deliver the accurate mathematically-provable results.

Source

[mudslag]

Wait till the trading markets get their hands on these machines.

[zeta_immersion]

and Anonymous will use it to predict tomorrow and thus bringing global mayhem (and maybe play Crysis or chess)

[primexx]

holy crap, quantum computing is here!

[articuno1au]

We've been using Quantum Cryptography for a while now.

This is nothing new >.<

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

We've been using Quantum Cryptography for a while now.

This is nothing new >.<

examples?

[+Warwagon MVC]

But will it play Crysis?

[Unix2]

What Quantum Computing means?

[Lezard]

put 1million computers together working on one thing simultaneously, ok now imagine that in a 10 sq meter room.

[HawkMan]

What Quantum Computing means?

At a very basic level a Qubit, instead of 1 and 0 is 1, 0 or "maybe". but it's also so much more than that.

As said above it also has the ability to solve complex problems by testing millions of variations of the same problem at once.

If this actually works, I would bet that NSA already has a few D-Wave one's hidden in their basement and have had them there since before they went public. and you can bet that they won't be allowed to export these thigns to just anyone(kind of like a few years ago a lot of countries couldn't by the new Intel and AMD cpu's because they where classed as super computers due to speed and export embargos on super computers in certain countries...)

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Yeah, there's some concern that D-Wave are exaggerating things. And if it was true governments all over the world would want one, as it renders classical encryption moot.

[HawkMan]

Yeah, I'm just wondering if this is TRUE quantum computing or just something like the old Russian Trinaries or some other hybrid.

If it was a true quantum computer would NSA even let them sell it to private companies, or have NSA already had these for a decade and it's now old tech for them ?

The fact that they use Python also makes me question it, if it's a quantum computer it shouldn't be logically compatible with any of todays programming languages, even at a high level. It's a completely different logic and ways of doings things. so the whole "You can program it using python" seems weird. But then it's a scripting language so maybe it's just a shell or something and they have their own programming underneath, but that's removing the people who needs the power from the actual power to treat the data as they want and need and only giving them a proxy access through python... I dunno. I guess we'll find out in time.

[Lezard]

I can run Crysis at Ultra settings, but I tried it with the Halo 2 pc release and it still wont run at full speed