And, not surprisingly, it's much faster than conventional computers, but only for a specific type of problem.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23519?cmpid=NLC%7CNSNS%7C2013-GLOBAL%7Cdn23519&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS&utm_content=dn23519 / commercially available quantum computer D-Wave company Burnaby Canada spooky action of quantum mechanics non-mainstream method adiabatic quantum computing quantum bits qubits zero one values 0 and 1 at the same time theoretically offering much faster computing speed truly quantum the qubits must be linked via the quantum property of entanglement entangled Catherine McGeoch Amherst College Massachusetts consultant D-Wave hardware is optimisation problem minimising minimizing minimize minimise solution complicated equation variables practical applications image recognition machine learning colleague Cong Wang Simon Fraser University, Burnaby problem D-Wave Two computer 439 qubits superconducting niobium loops solve problem high-end desktop computer 3600 times faster best conventional algorithm problem CPLEX performance problems conventional regular computers McGeoch results ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers Ischia Italy number-crunching Jeremy O'Brien of the University of Bristol, UK strange but highly optimised way of calculating that does not rely on entanglement repeat experiments confirm quantum effect generic computers perform device dedicated solving specific problem McGeoch step would be to build a conventional processor optimised for this task for a fairer comparison says O'Brien algorithms classical system solutions rapidly improvey slowly converge on the best answer D-Wave's computer best solution almost instantly classical algorithm D-Wave team now convincing customers new kind of device solve problems more efficiently academic benchmarking developing real-world applications Williams /
