I wonder if Google will buy this version, too. I think they've been working with D-wave for a few years now.
Lockheed Martin pays $10M for D-Wave's Quantum Computer
11–20 of 61 posts
Re: Lockheed Martin pays $10M for D-Wave's Quantum Computer
#12"Quantum computers operate at speeds unattainable by even today’s most powerful supercomputers, operations that are so fast, they can process millions of calculations in a fraction of the months, even years, traditional computers take"
God damn I hate bullshit lines like this used about QCs. The whole article is gives the usual misleading impression of QCs being generically faster than normal computers.
They're not.
They can answer some problems much, much faster than traditional non-QC computers because they are capable of running classes of algorithm that rely on quantum effects.
Don't get me wrong - that's a pretty darn useful subset of problems... the future of QCs is full of rosy cool stuff... but this isn't just like upping the clock cycles of a CPU.
It doesn't make everything faster. Completely different classes of constraint are being tweaked.
QCs aren't going to make everybody's laptop or smartphone rilly rilly fast.
Re: Lockheed Martin pays $10M for D-Wave's Quantum Computer
#13$10 million is cheap. True, it only does discrete optimization problems, but I think you could make your money back in a few years years renting it out at $5k/hour and consulting on translating problems to that domain.
Will some clients be wildly overpaying for something they could do equally well on regular computers? Sure, and they'll love every $ of it because of the bragging rights. Is this an efficient use of the hardware? Certainly not, it'll probably be exploiting <1% of the system's potential. Doesn't matter. People will frequently pay more for novelty than actual utility. If their vanity subsidizes the tiny subset of research computation that would have serious economic benefits, I call that a win-win.
Re: Lockheed Martin pays $10M for D-Wave's Quantum Computer
#14"500,000 times faster than its predecessor" How much power do quantum computers use and when will they be affordable enough to put in a smartphone/tablet? And why isn't any other company doing this?
Affordability will come, the really difficult problem with the techology from a portable perspective is you need an exceptionally low temperature and very low vibration environment otherwise you'll never anneal. Yer qubits get too warm and shakey in your pocket...
There is no need to keep them there. You can just ssh to some qbits from your pocket.
Re: Lockheed Martin pays $10M for D-Wave's Quantum Computer
#15So it's worth like 1/10th a Google employee.
Re: Lockheed Martin pays $10M for D-Wave's Quantum Computer
#16"Quantum computers operate at speeds unattainable by even today’s most powerful supercomputers, operations that are so fast, they can process millions of calculations in a fraction of the months, even years, traditional computers take" God damn I hate bullshit lines like this used about QCs. The whole article is gives the usual misleading impression of QCs being generically faster than normal computers. They're not.…
Any chance they could render textures, geometry, bullets and blood spray really fast?
Re: Lockheed Martin pays $10M for D-Wave's Quantum Computer
#17"Quantum computers operate at speeds unattainable by even today’s most powerful supercomputers, operations that are so fast, they can process millions of calculations in a fraction of the months, even years, traditional computers take" God damn I hate bullshit lines like this used about QCs. The whole article is gives the usual misleading impression of QCs being generically faster than normal computers. They're not.…
Are there any sources you know of that discuss what kinds of problems can be solved faster with quantum computing? I'm curious about them.
Re: Lockheed Martin pays $10M for D-Wave's Quantum Computer
#18Lockheed had been working with D-Wave for a while. If they decided to actually buy one of their computers, this probably means that they liked what they were seeing.
This is the second one LMT has purchased. Which means they liked it enough to buy the upgraded model.
Re: Lockheed Martin pays $10M for D-Wave's Quantum Computer
#19"Quantum computers operate at speeds unattainable by even today’s most powerful supercomputers, operations that are so fast, they can process millions of calculations in a fraction of the months, even years, traditional computers take" God damn I hate bullshit lines like this used about QCs. The whole article is gives the usual misleading impression of QCs being generically faster than normal computers. They're not.…
Are there any sources you know of that discuss what kinds of problems can be solved faster with quantum computing? I'm curious about them.
Wikipedia has a fairly decent list of quantum algorithms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_algorithm Shor's algorithm being one of the standard examples of where quantum computing completely crushes classical computing.
Re: Lockheed Martin pays $10M for D-Wave's Quantum Computer
#20So does this mean Shor's Algorithm is going to kick in for real and ruin all our securityz?
So does this mean Shor's Algorithm is going to kick in for real and ruin all our securityz? Nope. First, as I understand it, the D-Wave stuff isn't a system that can run Shor's. Second, Shor's only ruins security for a certain class of crypto algorithm. There are already algorithms that exist today that a proof against it (e.g the McEliece cryptosystem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McEliece_cryptosystem ). Third, if y…
People tend to equate asymmetric crypto with the likes of RSA; systems where the efficient factoring of large numbers is a death sentence. But there's a whole slew of other asymmetric cryptosystems without such properties, e.g. elliptic-curve cryptography.