We’ve been taking notes on the progress of D-Wave and its reputed breakthrough quantum computer for a while now. D-Wave’s credibility took a tumble at first, but at last report, things were looking up just last month, after it turned out that none other than NASA had fabbed their chip.
But now, things are on the skids for D-Wave and its QC once more. A formidable array of doubters has arisen and they’re questioning D-Wave’s achievement, dismissing it as hyperbole and describing company founder Geordie Rose as a speaker of untruths…ouch. They seem to feel that while there’s probably some computing going on somewhere in the D-Wave contraption, it ain’t necessarily of the quantum variety.
The doubting-est thomas seems to be one Scott Aaronson, a post-doc at the Institute for Quantum Computing, and someone who ought to know a thing or 3 about the topic. Aaronson’s blog Shtetl-Optimized lists his main reservations about the D-Wave QC, which can be summarized as “too good to be true”.
Another skeptic is Jason Pontin of MIT’s Technology Review whose viewpoint is captured via an interview with D-Wave founder Geordie Rose, at the link below. See also his notional article “A Giant Leap Forward in Computing? Maybe Not ” in the Sunday New York Times.
One supposes that all/most/some of the above dubious-ness can be inadequately paraphrased to something along the lines of Sagan’s quotation/truism/witticism ”extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence“…and so it seems, the ball is in D-Wave’s court to supply more proof in order to win over the skeptics. Or…perhaps D-W can just buy them off by buying them a lunch or 2 (…hey, that works sometimes).
Did D-Wave really demonstrate “the world’s first commercial quantum computer”? – Technology Review, April 6 2007
Related posts:
Leave a Reply