Google’s Quantum Computer Is A $15 Million Waste of Money

The D-Wave 2 quantum computer released on a wave of hype, it had a lot of potential to revolutionise the industry, and at just $15 million each, the systems were available to anyone who could afford it, so pretty much Google, NASA and the NSA were the popular parties of interest.

Google setup a new lab to test the capabilities of the device, with the intention of testing it more rigorously than ever before. Unfortunately for the team at Google it may have been a massive waste of time and money, as despite strong evidence for quantum effects within the D-Wave 2 than anyone had previously found, the system hasn’t proven any faster than a tradition computer solution. The team pit the D Wave 2 against conventional computers with tasks that were believed to be better suited to the D Wave, yet much to their surprise there was no clear advantage on either system in any of the tests.

There is still a lot of potential for quantum computing, it just doesn’t look like this one is “it”. Should researchers be able to crack what is known as “quantum speedup”, then this new type of computer should be able to calculate incredibly complex problems that would take the best conventional computer systems in the world years, or even centuries to solve.

Thank you The Verge for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of The Verge.