A few days ago, I held a quantum computer in my hand – or did I?
The niobium wafers I saw are the guts of the only commercially available quantum computer, but whether their calculations truly harness the weird world of quantum mechanics has provoked heated debate. Now the chips, made by D-Wave of Burnaby, Canada, have passed two tests that suggest that the bits in their machines have the quantum property of entanglement. That doesn't end the controversy, but it strengthens D-Wave's claim that a revolution in computing is a lot closer than we thought.
Though D-Wave has been selling its chips (see picture) since 2011, its quantum computing credentials have remained controversial. That's because the firm's devices go against the traditional model of quantum computing, which is based on quantum versions of the logic gates found in ordinary, or classical, computers.
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