Talk:D-Wave Systems

As I put in the article, on January 19, 2007 D-Wave announced that they would be demonstrating the first commercial 16-qubit adiabatic quantum computer at two events, one at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California on February 13th, 2007 and the second at the Telus World of Science in Vancouver, Canada on February 15th, 2007.

I am hoping that once the event has happened there will be enough interest in this topic that people who know a lot more about the physics, technical details, etc. will edit and add to to this and related pages. It may also be a good idea for someone to create a page about adiabatic quantum computers.

There is a lot of information out there. Here are some external links I have found through a Google search on "adiabatic quantum" and some sites:

• rose.blog - a lot of info in the blog by Dr. Rose
• arXiv.org Search Results - academic papers related to Adiabatic Quantum Computation
• How powerful is adiabatic quantum computation?
• Adiabatic Quantum Computation is Equivalent to Standard Quantum Computation

.. and a lot more

MartinSieg 20:11, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Based on pseudoscience

I don't know how to express it, but this company's technology is vaporware and pseudoscience. There are several problems with both the hardware and the computation: (1) there has been no fundamental breakthroughs in the physics required to create a quantum computer (an immediate Nobel event) and (2) it is strongly suspected that quantum computing cannot solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time. I am not a physicist so I will not address (1), however, I am a computer scientists (PhD), although quantum computing is not my particular field. Quantum computing is BQP and not NP, nor is there any known algorithm for computing NP-complete problems in Polynomial time on a quantum computer. If there are no NP->P transformations then this device is at no advantage to a classical computer so saying it `solved the traveling salesman problem' is a little misleading: answers to this problem can be computed in exponential time on a classical machine. I'm not sure how to say this other than that this article (and it's mention at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer) is highly suspect. I do not believe that the pseudoscience or fraudulent claims should be allowed in reference material. Would it be possible to mark this to make the reader wary?

Response: You raise some good points. However, you admit that you are neither a physicist nor a quantum computing specialist; whereas D-Wave employs several physicists and quantum computing specialists. Thus it's quite possible that they know something that you and the rest of us do not. Further, since D-Wave is a commercial enterprise, not an academic organization, the more significant their breakthroughs, the less likely they would be to reveal the details. So, hopefully, D-Wave will eventually demonstrate a system that behaves like some kind of "quantum" computer should and also performs as well as they predict. -- Red Cedar Salmon 20:46, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Response: Wikipedia is a place for established fact, not speculative statements. Anyone can make an outrageous claim. Does that warrant a spot on Wikipedia? Of course not - it would quickly become an advertizing trick. It is entirely possible that an outrageous claim is true. But the burden of proof rests with those making the claim. In science, claims have merit only to the extent that they're verifiable - corporate secrecy is not a free ticket out of scientific scrutiny. Speculative articles such as this one are an embarrassment to Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.118.179.114 (talk) 03:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Article states that NP-complete problems "not exactly solvable"?

According to the article, the company's CTO has stated that 'NP-complete problems "are probably not exactly solvable, no matter how big, fast or advanced computers get"'.

This strikes me as a very odd thing to say. As I understand it, all NP-complete problems are by definition in NP, which means that they must be exactly solvable, or their solutions could not be verifiable in polynomial time, which is one of the defining attributes of NP problems, even if you need a nondeterministic oracle to produce the candidate correct result. What's going on here? -- The Anome 10:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. From what I've read an NP-complete problem is one that is definitly solvable, (so we could build an algorithm to solve it), but that it would take an unreasonable amount of time to reach the solution. A QC page from NEC states that to completely factor a 300-digit number would take ~10 million years on a conventional computer, but only "several tens of seconds" on a QC. http://www.nec.co.jp/rd/Eng/innovative/E3/top.html Sahuagin 15:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

After reading what Dr. Rose wrote, I think what he means is that in an NP-complete problem, you never really know if your answer is the best possible answer (IE: An exact solution). If instead of only aiming for the single best answer, you provide a threshold that determines what you would consider to be a sufficient answer, then the computer can stop when it finds a sufficient answer.

Now, I don't get though why the computer couldn't just run through ALL possible solutions, selecting the best one. From what I have read about QC's thus far, that is what I thought they would be used for. To me what he explained sounds like a conventional computing solution to NP-complete problems. If a QC can only give you an adequate answer, and not the exact answer, then what is the point of a QC? Sahuagin 15:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

By "probably not exactly solvable" he was stating that it was likely that P=NP is not the case. It's currently the case that solutions may be found to NP problems, but with a very high cost in terms of speed.125.14.79.155 16:46, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

NPOV

An earlier version of this article read like a company press release. I've toned it down a bit, but it still makes no mention of any of the skeptical opinions which have been expressed about this demonstration (for example, see [1]), and the apparent lack, so far, of independent technical verification of their results. -- The Anome 10:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

NP-Complete ... very hard

Thank you to The Anome for contributions to this page. I see that you also moved Orion quantum computing system here, which I agree makes sense, at least until there is consensus that it is a proven system of historical significance. I guess my original version sounded like a press release because most of the information I found on the web was written by Dr. Rose. That's why we need people who know more about the related topics to revise the page.

My limited understanding of NP-complete problems and what Dr. Rose was saying about them is that they are not solvable in polynomial time by any foreseeable technology, and it is already accepted that we can accomplish a lot with ansers that are "good enough". If someone can clarify this in the article, please go ahead.

MartinSieg 15:33, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

"That's why we need people who know more about the related topics to revise the page."

This includes criticism. WP is not a brochure. -Ste|vertigo 21:52, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Separate info about company and tech

Perhaps this article should be strictly about D-Wave, including its history, people, goals, claims, and of course how others view it (skeptics, etc.).

My intent for the article about the Orion quantum computing system, which was merged with this one, was to provide information about the technology itself. Perhaps we need an article on adiabatic quantum computing instead? I feel that the article Adiabatic process (quantum mechanics) is insufficient. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by MartinSieg (talk • contribs) 04:29, 15 February 2007 (UTC).

At the moment, the company and the product are inseparable, since so far, the Orion quantum computing system is not available for sale, and no-one has one, apart from D-Wave Systems themselves. When these machines are widely deployed, or become famous in a context that is separate from their creator company, then the product itself will of course deserve its own article, in the same way as any notable computer product. -- The Anome 10:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Cliff Notes on Quantum Computing

Yes, an NP-complete problem is in NP by definition, and is therefore a yes-no question by definition and is not amenable to approximate solutions. However, there are optimization problems that can be called FNP-complete: They are NP-hard, and if P = NP, then they are in (the function version of) P. What Rose means is that we should be happy with approximate solutions to FNP-complete optimization problems, even though exact solutions are out of reach, even with quantum computers.

However, there is a theorem from the 1980s that for many FNP-complete problems, in particular for the travelling salesman problem, there is a threshold beyond which approximate solutions are already FNP-complete. This is contrary to what some of the press releases from D-Wave imply. On the other hand, in some places Rose steps back from this implication, and says that his computer might only provide some speedup for optimization problems in FNP, maybe only a polynomial speedup rather than an exponential speedup. If so, it would have no real bearing on NP-hardness, because all such notions allow a polynomial fudge factor.

The disclaimers from D-Wave imply that the Orion is not really a quantum computer, but a quantum special-purpose device. If you set aside quantum mechanics for the moment, it is easy to understand that a computer is suppose to be general-purpose, or in technical terms, Turing-complete. If it is not Turing-complete, then it is an SPD. Likewise a quantum computer should be quantumly Turing-complete. Since there is no such claim in the case of the "Orion" device, it is at best a quantum SPD. You can call it clasically Turing-complete if you count the classical computer that controls it. The technical debate at the moment is whether D-Wave's demo has any strength even as a quantum SPD, or if it is really a classical facsimile.

If some company, D-Wave or Q-Wave or someone else, built a real quantum computer, it still would not be able to try all things in parallel and solve NP-complete problems. Quantum computing should really be thought of as "randomized computing on steroids". Randomized computing is a kind of parallel computing, in the sense that if you flip a coin, you can imagine parallel worlds in which the answer was both heads and tails. It is a weak kind of parallelism that has some computational value, but only a limited amount. Quantum computing is similarly limited, even though it is exponentially faster than classical computing (even the randomized kind) for certain structured problems such as factoring. It is NOT thought to be all that much faster for NP-complete problems. Greg Kuperberg 21:26, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Needed Content and Fixes

The article is all about the recent announcement of D-Wave's and not the company itself. Content around this was needed. Material from archived versions of company website added. Content arround Orion demos pushed down the page. The quote of Andrew Steane was made to the Guardian newspaper so that source should be found and cited. Positive opinion on the announcement along with a call for peer review was made by David Deutsch, citation needed. Shadesofgrey 00:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I study quantum computing and you have my attention. What do you want to know? Greg Kuperberg 04:23, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Greg, what is needed is a description of an adiabatic quantum computer. Shadesofgrey 04:52, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Trivia

Should we note that their name is most likely a pun on d-wave as in $l=2\,$ angular momentum state, d-wave superconductivity, etc.?--Lionelbrits 16:40, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Speaking Truth to Parallelism

For additional skepticism, see also: Shtetl-Optimized blog by Scott Aaronson [2] [3]-69.87.200.74 01:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Deutsch on D-Wave

For an interview with David Deutsch, expressing skepticism about what precisely D-Wave has achieved but optimism about the general prognosis for quantum computing, see: Wired 2007-02, The Father of Quantum Computing [4] Iain David Stewart 22:43, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Nov 2007 demo

http://www.news.com/D-Waves-quantum-computer-ready-for-latest-demo/2100-1010_3-6217842.html?tag=newsmap -Ravedave 22:08, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Orion

I keep an eye on slashdot and they recently posted an article referring to tomshardware that says Orion now has 28 qubits. See [5]. The only thing I'm not sure of is if this is a reliable source.  Laptopdude  Talk  05:14, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

It's unlikely they have any qubits ;) Tom's hardware probably isn't an RS for this article. Verbal chat 07:25, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm much more certain about this one. [6]  Laptopdude  Talk  21:35, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I hope you're being sarcastic, that's a press release. :) -- intgr [talk] 10:49, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

AQC?

Is this technology AQC, near adiabatic evolution (ie finite error) or something else. Published coments suggest that it is but D-Wave itself isn't being exactly clear on the matter. Here are three pro AQC citations. Perhaps, these are of use to some contributor.

Meglicki, Zdzislaw (2008). Quantum Computing Without Magic: Devices. MIT Press. pp. 390–391. ISBN 026213506X.

Kyriakos N. Sgarbas, 2007, "The Road to Quantum Artificial Intelligence" in T.S.Papatheodorou, D.N.Christodoulakis and N.N.Karanikolas (eds), "Current Trends in Informatics", Vol.A, pp.469-477, New Technologies Publications, Athens, 2007 (SET 978-960-89784-0-9)

G.P. Berman. A.R. Bishop, F. Borgonovi, V.I. Tsifrinovich, 2007 "Controllable Adiabatic Manipulation of the Qubit State" arXiv:0705.1255v1 [quant-ph] Shadesofgrey (talk) 01:10, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Peer Review

Some earlier versions of this article cited D-Wave's articles to counter balance statements that none of D-wave's has been shared with the physics community. Thus maintaining a NPOV. However, these were citations to the a pre-print server, whichis not what most would consider peer reviewed -- but it does have a referal system to qualify contributors. So citations were removed. However, it is clear that D-Wave has may peer review articles -- see below. Perhaps, these can be worked in beside comments like "which has not been published or shared with the physics community"

Phys. Rev. A 79, 022107 (2009); Int. J. Quant. Inf. 7, 725 (2009); Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 117003 (2008); Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 197001 (2008); Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 130503 (2008); Quantum Information Processing, 7, pp. 193-209 (2008); Phys. Rev. A 78, 012352 (2008); Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 060503 (2008); Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 022501 (2007); Physical Review Letters, Volume 98, 177001 (2007); Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 057004 (2007); Quantum Information Processing 6, pp. 187-195 (2007); Phys. Rev. B 74, 104508 (2006); Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 047006 (2006); Phys. Rev. A 74, 042318 (2006); Science 309, p. 1704 (2005); Europhys. Lett. 72(6), pp. 880-886 (2005); New J. Phys 7, p. 230 (2005); Phys. Rev. B 72, 020503(R) (2005); Phys. Rev. B 71, 140505(R) (2005); Phys. Rev. B 71, 144501 (2005); Low Temp. Phys. 30, 661 (2004); Phys. Rev. A 70, 032322 (2004); Fizika Nizkikh Temperatur 30, 823 (2004); Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 017001 (2004); Phys. Rev. B 70, 212513 (2004); Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 037003 (2004); Phys. Rev. B 71, 024504 (2005); Phys. Rev. B 71, 064503 (2005); Phys. Rev. B 71, 064516 (2005); Europhys. Lett. 65, 844 (2004); Turk J Phys 27, 491 (2003); Phys. Rev. B 68, 014510 (2003); Phys. Rev. B 68, 134514 (2003); JETP Letters 77, 587 (2003); Phys. Rev. B 69, 060501(R) (2004); Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 097906 (2003); Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 097904 (2003); Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 117002 (2003); Phys. Rev. B 68, 144514 (2003); Phys. Rev. B 67, 100508(R) (2003); Phys.Rev. B 67, 155104 (2003); Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 127901 (2003); Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 037003 (2003); Phys. Rev. B 66, 214525 (2002); Phys. Rev. B 66, 174515 (2002); Quantum Information Processing 1, 155 (2002); Quantum Information Processing 1, 55 (2002); Physica C 368, 310 (2002); Physica C 372-376 P1, 178 (2002); IEEE Tran. Appl. Supercond. 12, 1877 (2002); Physica B 318, 162 (2002); Low Temp. Phys. 27, 616 (2001); Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 5369 (2001); Phys. Rev. B 63, 212502 (2001)

Shadesofgrey (talk) 01:22, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Neutrality, Factual Accuracy, and Lack of Recent Information

The article currently reads like the company has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be a scam and has published nothing on what it has done, which is not only non-neutral, but false. There is also very little recent information in the article, and a near void of information on their technology. My addition of a very brief description of recent technology based on peer-reviewed publications with links to them and their their pre-prints was instantly undone. Is there some reason for this information to be hidden? The existence of these publications (among many others, e.g. those cited by Shadesofgrey above) appears to contradict statements in the article now, so even if the publications should not be linked-to in the article, it seems that the article may not currently provide a fair and accurate description of the company or its work. I'll try to add a box at the top indicating that I think the neutrality of the article is questionable.

I fully acknowledge that I am not a neutral party with respect to this article, but apart from the photograph showing the existence of a real chip (also available at http://dwave.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/a-close-up-fully-wirebonded/) my addition only stated information published in cited peer-reviewed papers. Other photographs appear in those peer-reviewed papers, if those would be preferable. Ndickson (talk) 20:44, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

The problem is the lack of independent reliable sources, whereas we have WP:RS that they probably do not have a quantum computer. They have also been show to lie in the past. Verbal chat 05:54, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

WP:RS contains: Wikipedia:RS#Scholarship. I cited 4 peer-reviewed publications. Are you suggesting that Physical Review B, Superconducting Science Technology, and Science are less reliable sources than blog posts by people who don't have knowledge of the technology? Just up one paragraph from Wikipedia:RS#Scholarship: "Many Wikipedia articles rely on scholarly material. Academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources when available." In fact, to avoid any potential confusion with a universal quantum computer, I intentionally didn't refer to it as a "quantum computer", but an "adiabatic quantum optimization processor". The publications I cited give strong evidence that this is a valid classification, whereas the blog posts give no evidence that it is not valid, only speculative opinion. As for your claim that "They have also been show to lie in the past." I don't think that Physical Review B, Superconducting Science Technology, or Science have been shown to intentionally publish false information, so I suggest that you provide some evidence of their supposed past lies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ndickson (talk • contribs) 18:18, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Dwave have been shown to make untrue statements in the past (see their press releases), and as you have a clear COI you should not edit the article. Your dismissal of an expert in the area as "blog posts by people who don't have knowledge of the technology" shows your bias quite clearly. See WP:PRIMARY, and lets wait for second or third party reviews by people not affiliated with Dwave. The company have made their own bed by their attitude to the press and their scientific colleagues. Verbal chat 18:54, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "expert in the area", since Scott Aaronson has stated that he's not an expert in experimental physics and doesn't want to be asked about related matters: e.g. [7]. He's an expert in computational complexity theory, which only has a loose tangential relationship with experimental quantum computing. To my knowledge, D-Wave has not issued any press releases that contradict accepted results in complexity theory, so you'll have to give an example. Also, Aaronson does not claim to know details of D-Wave's technology, (in fact, many of the significant criticisms appear to specifically take issue with having a lack of information about D-Wave's technology), so I'm not sure how he could give an informed statement on the state of their technology. He certainly hasn't cited any technological reasons for his opinions on D-Wave. Ndickson (talk) 21:32, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Please propose here what changes and additions you would like made. Verbal chat 18:55, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

The page was originally created as a description of the demonstration of so-called "Orion" in 2007, but it hasn't changed significantly since then. It provides criticism, as it should, but no information on what is being criticized, and no information more recent than the listed criticisms, so it is difficult to ascertain whether even the criticism is up-to-date.

There should be some sort of description of recent technology and recent events. For example, the "Orion description" section, which doesn't even describe Orion, let alone its technology, refers in vague terms to technology that is several years old and no longer reflects the current state. Also, surprisingly, there is mention of two collaborations between Google and D-Wave (2007 and 2009) in the Hartmut Neven article, but no mention of these collaborations here. This is strong evidence that this article has become quite out-of-date and needs more recent information. Full details of D-Wave's technology have been published, most in peer-reviewed journals, such as those I cited.

With respect to neutrality, for example, the word "claim" appears 4 times in the introductory paragraph. While this type of language is (probably) grammatically correct, to hold other entities to the same standard, the same could be said of almost all other scientific efforts, since individual results (i.e. "this particular instance of this apparatus did exactly this on this date") are rarely possible to independently verify. Thus, peer-review and repetition of the experiment by independent entities for verification are used to determine the validity of experimental results (please see Scientific method). The paper cited with evidence of qubits shows extensive results from Macroscopic Resonant Tunnelling experiments as well as Landau-Zener transition experiments, which have been performed on rf-SQUIDs many times by other independent parties, so D-Wave's results are themselves an independent verification of these effects. This paper was accepted by Physical Review B as valid after review by independent experts in experimental superconducting quantum circuitry. As such, this fits with the standards set out by the scientific method. {Edit: Upon further investigation, NIST has also independently verified D-Wave's coupler design in the context of a superconducting phase qubit: [8] published in PRL recently. Ndickson (talk) 22:58, 7 June 2010 (UTC)}

While I understand that editing for neutrality is difficult, and open to different interpretations, it would be very difficult to argue to an independent mediator that the current article is written in a neutral tone. I strongly support keeping critical content, especially if some sort of context for the ciriticisms is given, but the text surrounding that content must be neutral. Although it is a large task to undertake, I would recommend that the current content and any added content eventually be rewritten by an independent party in a neutral tone. Ndickson (talk) 21:32, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

This article is ridiculously biased against D-Wave and needs extensive cleanup

Ndickson did not remove any of D-Wave's criticism (though many of them don't apply), but simply added facts, supported by peer-reviewed and published papers. If D-wave critics have a reason to doubt the correctness of any of the papers please share them with the scientific community. Otherwise stop undoing modifications that introduce uptodate and factual information to the wiki page.

Verbal, do you realise that saying something like "The problem is the lack of independent reliable sources" and at the same time removing references to published papers is a contradiction? You want to avoid anything that disproves your pre-conceived ideas, based on some opinionated blog entries? You are the one who has to defend yourself. Either prove the published papers wrong, or stop keeping this page out-of-date. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.13.217.230 (talk) 19:20, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

See WP:PRIMARY. Please propose changes you would like in a neutral manner. Verbal chat 19:40, 7 June 2010 (UTC)