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@ 2014/02/05Last year boffins were shocked when Google wrote a cheque for $15 million for a quantum computer system called DWave.
Now it turns out that the device may not be all it's cracked up to be and it might not be a quantum computer after all and Google was not the only one to fall for it.
Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin paid a cool $10 million for the world's first commercial quantum computer from a Canadian start up called D-Wave Systems. Last year, Google and NASA bought a second generation device for about $15 million with Lockheed upgrading its own machine for a further $10 million.
At the time, the move was heralded as a new era for quantum computation. Particularly when last year Cathy McGeoch at Amherst College in Massachusetts said she'd clocked the D-Wave device solving a certain class of problem some 3600 times faster than a conventional computer.
But now, according to Medium.com, D-Wave has undergone a dramatic change in fortune.
Now it turns out that the device may not be all it's cracked up to be and it might not be a quantum computer after all and Google was not the only one to fall for it.
Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin paid a cool $10 million for the world's first commercial quantum computer from a Canadian start up called D-Wave Systems. Last year, Google and NASA bought a second generation device for about $15 million with Lockheed upgrading its own machine for a further $10 million.
At the time, the move was heralded as a new era for quantum computation. Particularly when last year Cathy McGeoch at Amherst College in Massachusetts said she'd clocked the D-Wave device solving a certain class of problem some 3600 times faster than a conventional computer.
But now, according to Medium.com, D-Wave has undergone a dramatic change in fortune.
