A new study comparing the speed of quantum computers to conventional computers has shown that quantum is far slower than the other computers. The speed test indicated a draw between them.
Although it was advertised earlier as being capable of solving problems beyond the reach of traditional computers, D-Wave Systems’ quantum computer is still far from its intended goals.
D-Wave is marketed as a revolutionary quantum machine that solves problems faster than ordinary computers. A new test has shown this,” says the Science Magazine’s study Quantum or Not, which was published in June.
Matthias Troyer, a physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, claims that the quantum computer’s time to solve a setback increases exponentially as the setback grows, just like a traditional computer. The quantum computer doesn’t show any quantum speedup as the setback or problem grows in size.
“To make it useful, it must have speed-up. We have yet to see that. Troyer points out that National Post does not deny it exists.
D-Wave however refutes the claim that the calculations used in the study were too simple to show the quantum-powered chips they use. The chairman and co-founder of D-Wave also suggested that Troyer’s research may be obsolete.
“They need to choose problems that are more difficult,” Colin Williams, a computer scientist at D-Wave and the director of business development for D-Wave, told Wired.
Williams mentions a recent study by Itay Shen, a computer scientist from the University of Southern California. It shows that D-Wave quantum machines can compute much faster than conventional computers. Hen presented some results at the Third Workshop on Adiabatic Quantum Computing in Los Angeles last week, but he reminded that this work is still in its infancy.
D-Wave Systems claims that its quantum computers are faster than conventional personal computers by performing thousands of times faster.
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A quantum computer does not store information in binary numbers like conventional computers. Instead, it uses qubits. Qubits can be either a 1 or 0, or both. “Quantum computers can simultaneously consider and manipulate all combinations bits due to quantum superposition and the quantum effects of quantum tunnelling and entanglement.” This description is from the D-Wave Systems website.
Haig Farris, a venture capitalist, also stated to the National Post that Haig’s research was “one snip in an continuum, one small piece of information.”
“If you look back at the beginning of computing in the 1950s, when the transistor was first commercialized, all that the transistors were capable of doing was running a small clock. To get the computing industry to where it is today, it took fifty years and a trillion dollars of spending. We’re just a small step on the way to that goal, but we’re still in the early stages. Farris says that whatever [Professor Troyer] has said in a year or so from now will be irrelevant.”
Researchers agree that such a test of the controversial quantum computing computer is the most fair. Troyer’s research did however convince some in the quantum computing industry.
“D-Wave’s people claim they can manipulate information using the rules of quantum mechanics, and that this gives them a benefit. National Post was told by Raymond Laflamme (executive director of the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing), that they have not seen any such gains.
Wim van Dam, a Santa Barbara-based computer scientist, thinks Troyer’s study is solid. This puts a huge question mark on D-Wave System’s promise of significant speedups from quantum computing.