The future of Quantum Computing. Neither here nor there

©vaklove

We haven’t talked about quantum computing on the digital pages of Recurrent Patterns for a while. It is time to check what’s new and hot in the deep freeze boxes with quantum chips.

Let’s start with IBM — Not much to report. IBM spent most of last year working on better tools to make programming its quantum computer easier. Despite the flowery language describing how easy it is to use now, it is still in the realm of research and academia.

Next we have D-Wave with its announcement ‘Beyond Classical: D-Wave First to Demonstrate Quantum Supremacy on Useful, Real-World Problem.’ Their claim is that a ‘D-Wave annealing computer performs magnetic materials simulation in minutes that would take nearly one million years and more than the world’s annual electricity consumption to solve using a classical supercomputer built with GPU clusters.’

The term Quantum Supremacy implies that a quantum computer can solve a problem much much faster than a regular (or classical) computer. As you look at D-Wave’s announcement headline, please note the words — ‘Useful,’ ‘Real-World Problem.’ Google claimed supremacy of its quantum computer in October 2019 with ‘Quantum Supremacy Using a Programmable Superconducting Processor,’ where the machine performed ‘… target computation in 200 seconds, and from measurements in our…