These d-wave guys are the greatest scam geniuses in history. First they make a "quantum computer" and now they're building trainable exo-suits. I don't even know where they come up with this stuff.
The other high profile guys I'm assuming you mean are Google and IBM. It would be interesting to know how d-wave "quantum computers" have actually made any kind of dent in their respective companies other than pure marketing hype so that they can say they have "quantum computers".
And if it is a flop, well, the marginal cost is pretty minor. When I was at MIT we bought all sorts of crazy things some of which turned out to be useful in unexpected ways once you actually had the equipment in your hands.
A good example of this was the EmDrive which really seemed like a scam to me but might have a there there. I wouldn't have believed it at all except that NASA, a seemingly independent organization where this is concerned, saw enough that it's apparently worth looking further. If it had been the 100% scam I assumed (and that's still not clear) I'd still be OK with the money spent.
At the moment I still don't believe D-Wave and dinnertime discussions with friends at Google have not caused me to change my opinion.
D-wave isn't selling a "universal" quantum computer, but the platform they are and have continued to deliver has shown real, tangible progress with respect to quantum tunneling (even though their coverage has been typically questionable, the best layman's explanation of their most recent results happens to be from Ars [0]). No we're not getting a "universal" quantum computer anytime soon and no they're never going to be accessible to average consumers (so remain skeptical of anyone who says otherwise) but those claiming D-Wave is a scam/con are absurd.
[0] http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/is-d-waves-quantum-pr...
However, they really want the publicity from calling it a quantum computer so they continue to do so.
Please bear in mind that Google as well as NASA have bought D-Wave computers. Whether the effect is real or not, they do not exactly transfer money to scammers, and are not easy, unsophisticated "marks" (targets of scammers.)
"Hey Google, it's your cousin!" is not how these sales take place. Use of a word like scam is inappropriate, especially given that sales have been made, and the ordered equipment has been delivered and is being used. (By people who run Google and who send things to space.)
Please be a bit more judicious in your phrasing.
The comments I'm seeing as response I agree don't seem to be conducive to an actual discussion so I'll rephrase but the point about the intelligence and infallible decision making abilities of the large organization being used as counterclaims do not really add up. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof is the usual bar for claims that go above and beyond current state of the art and science. D-wave has consistently failed in that regard. I find their approach unscientific and unethical for the kinds of claims they are making for whatever technology they have sold to whatever organizations. In the long run no one wins when such tactics are used.
Unfortunately I think you're outside of the edit window though. the phrasing you just used (in your second, longer paragraph) is fine to me! It should have been your original phrasing (both IMO and by HN guidelines.)
Thanks for following up.
It's hard to think of a reason to refuse to publicly prove that your quantum computer is actually working if it really is, if it isn't it makes a lot of sense of course.
Concerning the purchases of Google and the US government: These are probably more like research grants for D-Wave, as the buyers expect that at some time there might come a working quantum computer from D-Wave, and buying a prototype (even a faulty one) puts them in a good position to be the first to actually get a working version, while helping the company to stay afloat. By the way, Google invested 200 million USD in a different quantum computing technology endeavour led by a UC Santa Barbara professor, which would make little sense if they already had a working quantum computer.
The value of D-Wave as a company is not only defined by their ability to build a working quantum computer though, as there could be significant value in the patent portfolio they built / acquired and in their expertise in building and assembling superconducting chips and systems, which are both highly non-trivial tasks.
Their way of communicating with the public is of course highly misleading, which is why many people in the scientific community have very little respect for them, as this is viewed as highly unethical and harmful behavior in science (but not necessarily in the business world).
Lots of pure research goes nowhere. It's not like Geordie is defrauding the old and disabled. He's working with really really really smart people with lots of money.
Honestly, we need more of this and less of SnapChat startups.
Because there is no reliable way to fund it. Said another way, the time horizon for repayment is too long and too risky for traditional, non-corporate, non-public investing.
Lets assume you have a breakthrough with research, now you have to make a product to sell. Which means you need to likely build a new market, or even in the best case of an existing market change the team composition to fund product development.
Those are all risks that Banks and Venture Money (except in very rare cases) aren't willing to take.
What's harmful (IMHO) is making spectacular claims (look we have a working quantum computer!) and then not back them up by evidence. It is of course okay to sell your product aggressively as a startup, and sometimes to oversell it as well (fake it until you can make it), but I really have my doubts that D-Wave can "make it" in the near future, as there are just so many difficult problems to solve for which we don't even have a viabe approach yet (e.g building large scale qubit coupling schemes), and trust me most quantum computing research groups have people that are at least as smart and dedicated as the people working at D-Wave.
[0] http://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~martinisgroup/publications.shtm... [1] https://research.googleblog.com/2016/06/quantum-annealing-wi...
The quantum annealing example from the Google research blog seems to use normal quantum gates to simulate the nearest-neighbor interactions in a spin chain. The nature article is currently down but it seems they use "Trotterization" to simulate the spin chain using one- and two-qubits gates.
And I didn't touch on your earlier (erroneous) comment on the scientific community's perception of D-Wave, but I think it needs to be said that in actual professional circles the research they're performing isn't met with as much derision as they seem to garner in these more causally informed settings. It's hyped and a difficult subject to understand, so that's fair, but I suggest really informing yourself if you're going to go out there and make the claims you're making.
[0] http://research.google.com/pubs/pub44292.html [1] https://aqccreg2016.eventfarm.com/events/index/7fff5387-0000... http://1qbit.com/insights-inside-googles-annual-adiabatic-qu... [2] (Another article reviewing QA with Martinis and team) http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.02206
Again, their digital adiabatic quantum computing relies on a gate-based quantum processor, which provides a universal set of qubits gates and thus can in principle simulate any Hamiltonian, quantum annealing is just an algorithm that runs on it.
And I don't want to be overly negative, but the perception of D-Wave in "more professional" circles was not very enthusiastic in my experience, which to a large extent is also D-Waves fault.
Yes it is.