The world’s only commercially-available quantum computer has faced much controversy about whether it is actually faster or better than a conventional computer. A new independent speed test helps to answer that question.

In short: the D-Wave quantum computer is thousands of times faster than other commercial computers at the very specific problem it was designed to solve. The computer is  about average on other types of problems, and, importantly, it is still not clear whether the speed advantage will scale up as the computer gets bigger. That would be necessary to fulfil one of the big promises of quantum computing: making otherwise-intractable problems solvable.

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