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The more interesting part of the story is that they're collaborating with D-Wave to try and get these algorithms running on their hardware. Should be interesting to see what comes out of this, considering the amount of skepticism that has been surrounding D-Wave.

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When I was working at Google in 2007, D-Wave's CEO came by and gave a talk about their chips. It was interesting and he was immediately interested in getting Google on board with access to resources that most of the world doesn't have.

I remember at the time holding one of the first quantum processors in the world and thinking how this is going to change history. Even though at the time it only did a single simple task, it was clear that big things were coming. One thing he mentioned, and I forget the specifics so I can't really elaborate, but the chips are designed to be crippled in a certain way that doesn't allow them to implement Shor's algorithm. Apparently this was at the request of the NSA. I've no idea if that is still the case, but worth keeping in mind.

I had to look it up so hopefully this is helpful to someone else: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm

I wonder if NSA already has their own quantum computers which can implement Shor's algorithm?

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