When you purchase through links on our internet site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it work .
The humanity ’s first commercial quantum computer , made by the Canadian troupe D - Wave Systems Inc. , perform no well than a classical calculator in a recent depth psychology .
Quantum computersare call back to be able to puzzle out complex trouble thousands of times faster than classical computer , and scientists have been work on originate them for more than a decade . These devices could be useful for modeling quantum mechanics — the realm of physics that key how issue at the sub - microscopic scale can exist as both a speck and a wave — or for cracking encrypted online information .
The first quantum computers, made by the Canadian company D-Wave Systems, Inc., may be no faster than classical PCs, a study finds.
A team of research worker compared the performance of a D - Wave Two machine to that of a classical reckoner on a specific set of trouble , and die to find grounds that the quantum computing machine was firm . [ 10 Technologies That Will Transform Your Life ]
" We do not see any grounds of quantum speedup in theD - Wave twist , " said Matthias Troyer , a theoretic physicist at ETH Zurich , in Switzerland , and Centennial State - writer of the study , detail today ( June 19 ) in the journal Science .
Quantum machines
classic figurer perform reckoning using bits , whose value can only be 0 or 1 . Quantum calculator instead use quantum bits , or " qubits , " that can live as a 0 and 1 at the same fourth dimension . This allow quantum machine to perform multiple calculations at once .
Theoretical physicist Richard Feynman was one of the first to propose the idea of quantum calculator in the 1980s , as a way to overcome the limitation of classic computers in copy quantum system in physics . Later , mathematician Peter Shor showed that a quantum figurer could factor out an integer into prime issue , an power that could be used to crack encoding algorithms on the Internet .
The ship’s company D - Wave , based in Burnaby , Canada , build what it cry the first commercial quantum computer in 2011 . In 2013,Google and NASA buy oneof the company ’s second - coevals twist to employ for artificial intelligence inquiry .
Yet , some scientists remain skepticalthat the D - undulation equipment operate quicker than a traditional computer .
Troyer and his colleagues set out to test the 503 - qubit D - Wave Two gadget . They pose a thousand random optimisation problems to the machine , and measure how long it convey to work them , compared with a classical PC .
For the problems they examine , the researchers incur no grounds of " quantum speedup , " or faster performance , on the D - Wave Two .
Quantum pessimism
There could be several explanations for these resultant , the research worker said . Perhaps , the scientist merely did n’t test the machine on the right set of problems .
Colin Williams , a quantum calculator scientist and D - Wave ’s director of occupation development , told Science Magazine that the problems used in the study were " not at all the ripe choice for probing a quantum speedup . "
Or , it could be that the D - Wave ’s qubits are not ideal — the gadget usesqubit technologythat is a decade older , so the bit may only remain in position for about 10 nanosecond ( 10 billionth of a 2d ) , even though it takes 20 microseconds ( 2,000 time as long ) to solve a job , Troyer said . Another hypothesis is that the D - Wave may not have been calibrated aright , he say .
So far , no one has detect cases where the D - Wave shows quantum speedup , Troyer say . " The more we look and we do n’t find it , the more pessimistic I become , " he tell .
