Thought Leadership
The quantum computing provider D-Wave has announced a milestone: The Palo Alto, California-based company claims to have mastered a task with its quantum computer that overwhelms conventional computers – a state known as “quantum supremacy”. But there are also critical voices.
In a study published on Wednesday in the journal Science, D-Wave describes a simulation of magnetic materials that classical computers with their binary bits supposedly cannot achieve. “This, in some sense, is the holy grail for quantum computing,” said Alan Baratz, Chief Executive of D-Wave. This marks D-Wave’s entry into the race for supremacy in the quantum space, which has been ongoing since Google’s announcement in 2019. Amazon and Microsoft are also active, with new quantum chips (Majorana 1 and Ocelot).
Quantum Annealing
At the heart of D-Wave’s work is the simulation of magnetic material properties, which are important for technologies such as sensors or medical imaging. “We need to know why and how magnetic materials respond to changes in their environment, to design them and to discover them,” explained Andrew King, Senior Distinguished Scientist at D-Wave. The calculations took less than 20 minutes – a leading supercomputer would have taken almost a million years, according to King.
D-Wave relies on “quantum annealing”, a technology that is suitable for optimization tasks, for example in logistics. Customers such as NTT Docomo from Japan and the Canadian Pattison Food Group are already using such solutions.
D-Wave says: “We believe that the ability to recreate the entire suite of results we produced is not possible classically,” said Chief Development Officer Trevor Lanting, referring to his team’s simulations.
Quantum supremacy or quantum utility?
But the enthusiasm is not shared by everyone. Physicist Miles Stoudenmire from the Flatiron Institute considers the results to be questionable. In his own study, he argues that traditional computers can keep up with the new approaches. “We’re just saying, ‘Look, this one problem at this one time didn’t beat classical computers. Try again,'” says Stoudenmire. Analyst Heather West of International Data Corp. notes that many experts now prefer “quantum advantage” or “quantum utility” to “quantum supremacy” to emphasize the practical benefits. D-Wave is sticking to its guns: “We’re solving an important problem,” said King, “and it’s in a regime that is totally intractable for leading classical methods. That’s why we call it quantum supremacy.”
