D-Wave Archives - The Next Platform

Volkswagen Refining Machine Learning on D-Wave System

March 14, 2018 Nicole Hemsoth

Researchers at Volkswagen have been at the cutting edge of implementing D-Wave quantum computers for a number of complex optimization problems, including traffic flow optimization, among other potential use cases.

These efforts are generally focused on developing algorithms suitable for the company’s recently purchased 2000-qubit quantum system and have expanded to a range of new machine learning possibilities, including what a research team at the company’s U.S. R&D office and the Volkswagen Data:Lab in Munich are calling quantum-assisted cluster analysis.

The art and science of clustering is well known for machine learning on classical computing architectures, but the VW approach …
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At the Cutting Edge of Quantum Computing Research

February 12, 2018

On today’s podcast episode of “The Interview” with The Next Platform, we focus on some of the recent quantum computing developments out of Oak Ridge National Lab’s Quantum Computing Institute with the center’s director, Dr. Travis Humble.

Regular readers will recall previous work Humble has done on the quantum simulator, as well as other lab and Quantum Insitute efforts on creating hybrid quantum and neuromorphic supercomputers and building software frameworks to support quantum interfacing. In our discussion we check in on progress along all of these fronts, including a more detailed conversation about the XACC programming framework for …
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D-Wave Makes Quantum Leap with Reverse Annealing

November 14, 2017 Nicole Hemsoth

The art and science of quantum annealing to arrive at a best of all worlds answer to difficult questions has been well understood for years (even if implementing it as a computational device took time). But that area is now being turned on its head—all for the sake of achieving more nuanced results that balance the best of quantum and classical algorithms.

This new approach to quantum computing is called reverse annealing, something that has been on the research wish-list at Google and elsewhere, but is now a reality on the newest D-Wave 2000Q (2048 qubit) hardware. The company described …
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IBM Bolsters Quantum Capability, Emphasizes Device Differentiation

November 10, 2017 Nicole Hemsoth

Much of the quantum computing hype of the last few years has centered on D-Wave, which has installed a number of functional systems and is hard at work making quantum programming more practical.

Smaller companies like Rigetti Computing are gaining traction as well, but all the while, in the background, IBM has been steadily furthering quantum computing work that kicked off at IBM Research in the mid-1970s with the introduction of the quantum information concept by Charlie Bennett.

Since those early days, IBM has hit some important milestones on the road to quantum computing, including demonstrating the first quantum …
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One Step Closer to Easier Quantum Programming

October 27, 2017 Nicole Hemsoth

For quantum computing to make the leap from theory and slim early use cases to broader adoption, a programmability jump is required. Some of the first hurdles have been knocked over in the last few weeks with new compiler and API-based development efforts that abstract some of the complex physics required for both qubit and gate-based approaches to quantum devices.

The more public recent effort was the open source publication of OpenFermion, a quantum compiler based on work at Google and quantum startup, Rigetti Computing, that is focused on applications in quantum chemistry and materials science. OpenFermion is …
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Strong FBI Ties for Next Generation Quantum Computer

March 13, 2017 Nicole Hemsoth

It is a good time to be the maker of a machine that excels in large-scale optimization problems for cybersecurity and defense. And it is even better to be the only maker of such a machine at a time when the need for a post-Moore’s Law system is in high demand.

We have already described the U.S. Department of Energy’s drive to place a novel architecture at the heart of one of the future exascale supercomputers, and we have also explored the range of options that might fall under that novel processing umbrella. From neuromorphic chips, deep learning PIM-based architectures, …
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Future Economies of Scale for Quantum Computing

October 18, 2016 Nicole Hemsoth

Clustering together commodity servers has allowed the economies of scale that enable large-scale cloud computing, but as we look to the future of big infrastructure beyond Moore’s Law, how might bleeding edge technologies capture similar share and mass production?

To say that quantum computing is a success simply because a few machines manufactured by quantum device maker, D-Wave, would not necessarily be accurate. However, what the few purchases of such machines by Los Alamos National Lab, Google, and Lockheed Martin do show is that there is enough interest and potential to get the technology off the ground and …
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So, You Want to Program Quantum Computers…

September 14, 2016 Nicole Hemsoth

The jury is still out when it comes to how wide-ranging the application set and market potential for quantum computing will be. Optimistic estimates project that in the 2020s it will be a billion-dollar field, while others expect the novelty will wear off and the one company behind the actual production of quantum annealing machines will go bust.

Ultimately, whichever direction the market goes with quantum computing will depend on two things. First, the ability for applications of sufficient value to warrant the cost of quantum systems have to be in place. Second, and connected to that point, is the …
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Is Quantum Computing Set For An Investment Boom?

September 3, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Despite the woes heaped onto investors in the past couple of weeks, the future is still out there, waiting to be created. And that creation takes funding, and keen eyes or plain old luck – and maybe a little bit of both – to make the right bets on the technologies that will make it in the future and indeed comprise that future.

Quantum computing is, for many, a given for solving certain kinds of problems, and it is going to take a significant amount of funding to turn the ideas embodied in quantum computing into working machines. That was …
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Google Sees Long, Expensive Road Ahead For Quantum Computing

July 22, 2015 Timothy Prickett Morgan

As was the case over seven decades ago in the early days of digital computing – when the switch at the heart of the system was a vacuum tube, not even a transistor – some of the smartest mathematicians and information theorists today are driving the development of quantum computers, trying to figure out the best physical components to use to run complex algorithms.

There is no consensus on what, precisely, a quantum computer is or isn’t, but what most will agree on is that a different approach is needed to solve some of the most intractable computing problems.

It …
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