Universal quantum computers don’t exist, but that hasn’t stopped D-Wave from carving out its own place in the quantum computing market. Today, the 17-year-old company is announcing its forth quantum chip, the 2000Q, doubling the number of qubits on its exiting 1000Q chip.
The Burnaby, British Columbia based company’s chips fall under a specific class of quantum computing called quantum annealing. Annealing is useful for a subset of optimization computing problems.
If you remember back to your days of beginner calculus, you might remember a class of problems where you were asked to determine what size squares should be cut from the corners of a sheet of cardboard to produce the largest box. These “optimization” questions scale up and serve as the underpinnings for many problems in machine learning, financial analysis and radiotherapy.
Vern Brownell, CEO of D-Wave explained to TechCrunch that he’s seeing early interest in the 2000Q from companies in financial services and defense. For now, these groups are looking to get their hands on the cutting-edge for research and development.
