By Barbara G. Goode
Small Times Staff
Feb. 19, 2007 — Last week D-Wave Systems, Inc. a privately-held Canadian firm headquartered near Vancouver, B.C., demonstrated what it calls the world’s first commercially viable quantum computer. Company officials formally announced the technology at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
Quantum computing offers the potential to create value in areas where problems or requirements exceed the capability of digital computing, the company says. But D-Wave notes that its new device is intended as a complement to conventional computers, not as a replacement for them. The demo aimed to show how the machine can run commercial applications and solve problems that severely challenge conventional (digital) computers.
Although many scientists believe quantum computing to be many years from reality, according to an Associated Press (AP) report on the event D-Wave intends to offer its technology for sale next year. It’s no surprise, then, that D-Wave’s event caused quite a stir and caught the attention of journalists from a wide range of media outlets including ABC News.
 D-Wave’s quantum computing technology. (Photo: D-Wave) |
Skeptics point out, though, that D-Wave has not published its work in peer-reviewed journals. So doubts abound concerning whether the company is demonstrating true quantum computing. Perhaps that’s why, according to AP, D-Wave’s CEO Herb Martin emphasized that the machine is “not a true quantum computer and is instead a kind of special-purpose machine that uses some quantum mechanics to solve problems.”
Among the many articles covering the demo, HPCwire‘s offers perhaps the best technical explanation of the technology, and thus illustrates the basis of the skepticism. Meantime D-Wave plans to answer doubters by offering a Web-based interface that allows people to try out the technology on their own applications.
In an attempt to “cut through the fog” generated by the demo, Wired News interviewed Oxford University theoretical physicist David Deutsch, who pioneered the field of quantum computing. Deutsch speculated that the most important application of quantum computing will be simulation of quantum systems (that is, objects doing different things in different universes). Using standard methods such calculation “becomes infeasible very, very quickly,” said Deutsch, “…whereas a quantum computer could mimic such a process directly…”
“Perhaps in the long run, as nanotechnology becomes quantum technology, that will be a very important generic application,” Deutsch said.