D-Wave Announces Commercially Available Quantum Computer 133
New submitter peetm writes "Computing company D-Wave has announced they're selling a quantum computing system commercially, which they're calling the D-Wave One. The D-Wave system comes equipped with a 128-qubit processor designed to perform discrete optimization operations. A qubit is the basic unit of quantum information – analogous to a bit in conventional computing. For a broader understanding of how qubits work, check out Ars Technica's excellent guide."
Re:Quantum annealing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So how many frames will this get in Crysis? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but it isn't the same type that D-Wave's processor solves, which is to say solving a particular class of differential equation in up to 16 8-bit variables.
Most of the time spent in ray tracing is actually in database searching (finding objects that a ray intersects with), which can be sped up by a quantum algorithm, but it isn't one that can be implemented on D-Wave's machine.