From the high-performance computing nerds at HPC Wire, March 13:
Quantum computing pioneer D-Wave yesterday reported achieving Quantum Supremacy with a simulation of magnetic material performed on its Advantage2 system. For years D-Wave has championed its quantum annealing approach as the only readily available form of quantum computing. Rival gate-based systems, says D-Wave, aren’t ready now and won’t be for years.
At a virtual press conference, Alan Baratz, D-Wave CEO, said, “Today is a very important day, not just for D-wave, but for the entire quantum computing industry. Today, we are announcing that we have been able to solve an important, useful, real world problem on our quantum computer that cannot be solved classically, what we call quantum supremacy.
“This is what everybody in the quantum industry aspires to and is working toward. this was not just solving a problem that can’t be solved classically, this was solving an important, useful, real world problem. It happens to be in the area of magnetic material simulation, and solving it in a matter of minutes, whereas it would take nearly a million years to solve on classical computers, and it would require more than the world’s annual energy consumption.”
Yet even before the press conference had started, two papers (one from Flatiron Institute and one from EPFL Lausanne) were disputing D-Wave’s claim, reporting that they had solved much the same problem but using classical computers. Of course, there’ve also been two other recent claims of Quantum Supremacy, one by Google in December, and another by the University of Science and Technology in China. The latter two used random circuit analysis (RCA) as their benchmark....
....MUCH MORE, they go deep.
