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Right this moment, quantum computing firm D-Wave is saying the provision of its next-generation quantum annealer, a specialised processor that makes use of quantum results to unravel optimization and minimization issues. The {hardware} itself is not a lot of a shock—D-Wave was discussing its particulars months in the past—however D-Wave talked with Ars in regards to the challenges of constructing a chip with over 1,000,000 particular person quantum units. And the corporate is coupling the {hardware}’s launch to the provision of a brand new software program stack that features a bit like middleware between the quantum {hardware} and classical computer systems.
Quantum annealing
Quantum computer systems being constructed by corporations like Google and IBM are general-purpose, gate-based machines. They’ll resolve any downside and may present an unlimited acceleration for particular lessons of issues—or they may, as quickly because the gate rely will get excessive sufficient. Proper now, these quantum computer systems are restricted to a few-dozen gates and don’t have any error correction. Bringing them as much as the size wanted presents a sequence of inauspicious technical challenges.
D-Wave’s machine shouldn’t be general-purpose; it is technically a quantum annealer, not a quantum laptop. It performs calculations that discover low-energy states for various configurations of the {hardware}’s quantum units. As such, it can solely work if a computing downside will be translated into an energy-minimization downside in one of many chip’s potential configurations. That is not as limiting as it’d sound, since many types of optimization will be translated to an power minimization downside, together with issues like sophisticated scheduling points and protein buildings.
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