D-Wave Claims Leap in Quantum Computing, Researchers Skeptical
- Shows exponential improvement on prior versions, company says
- Critics say D-Wave’s approach unlikely to yield breakthrough
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D-Wave Systems Inc. has sold its quantum computers to Google and U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. It has now begun selling a new, more-powerful machine.
A single unit of quantum data is called a quantum bit, or "qubit", and the Burnaby, Canada-based company said its new device has a processor capable of handling 2,000 of them at any instant -- twice as many as the previous version. D-Wave also said that initial benchmark tests had shown achievable performance was as much as 1,000 times greater than the predecessor.