D-Wave, a British Columbia–based technology firm, made a scientific and stock-market splash on Wednesday with its declaration of a breakthrough in quantum computing. But for some experts, the company’s claims are landing with a thud.
In a paper published in Science, an international team of more than 60 people led by D-Wave scientist Andrew King reported a demonstration of “quantum advantage,” which occurs when a quantum computer solves a problem that would be nigh impossible for a classical computer to handle. Quantum computers derive their number-crunching power from quantum bits, or qubits. Unlike the regular binary bits of classical computers, which use 1’s and 0’s, qubits can use values of 0, 1 and any increment in between. Classical computers handle calculations like an assembly line, bit by bit. Quantum computers can use carefully orchestrated arrays of qubits to simultaneously consider all possible values, exponentially increasing the speed and breadth of calculations.
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