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Supercomputing Medicine Hardware Technology

D-Wave Makes Its Quantum Computers Free To Anyone Working On Coronavirus Crisis 18

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: D-Wave today made its quantum computers available for free to researchers and developers working on responses to the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. D-Wave partners and customers Cineca, Denso, Forschungszentrum Julich, Kyocera, MDR, Menten AI, NEC, OTI Lumionics, QAR Lab at LMU Munich, Sigma-i, Tohoku University, and Volkswagen are also offering to help. They will provide access to their engineering teams with expertise on how to use quantum computers, formulate problems, and develop solutions.

Quantum computing leverages qubits to perform computations that would be much more difficult, or simply not feasible, for a classical computer. Based in Burnaby, Canada, D-Wave was the first company to sell commercial quantum computers, which are built to use quantum annealing. D-Wave says the move to make access free is a response to a cross-industry request from the Canadian government for solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic. Free and unlimited commercial contract-level access to D-Wave's quantum computers is available in 35 countries across North America, Europe, and Asia via Leap, the company's quantum cloud service. Just last month, D-Wave debuted Leap 2, which includes a hybrid solver service and solves problems of up to 10,000 variables.
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D-Wave Makes Its Quantum Computers Free To Anyone Working On Coronavirus Crisis

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  • Ahahahahaha. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @07:21PM (#59894768)

    No.. let me laugh some more. Ahahahahahahahha.

    Gee, thanks D-Wave. Your offer is almost as kind as the offer I heard Universal made to let any Coronavirus researcher pick any want they want from the Harry Potter store. Who knows, maybe they can do some sort of Virioso Obliterato spell amirite?

  • by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @07:31PM (#59894814)

    Quantum anneallers can't do anything a digital computer can also do, and virus and treatment modelling are done on supercomputers already. A D-wave chip doesn't even weigh enough to make a nice paperweight for a corvid19 researcher.

  • by JoeDuncan ( 874519 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @07:36PM (#59894830)

    ... they can have my dragon to fight covid-19 too! It's been awhile since our last quest.

  • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @09:09PM (#59895078) Journal
    D-Wave offers free computing time to anyone who can figure out how to use it in any practical way whatsoever.
  • D-Wave today made its quantum computers available for free to researchers and developers working on responses to the coronavirus

    WONDERFUL, just in time -- I suddenly needed a lot more computer resources and this'll surely help.

    Let me introduce you to: CORONACOIN (Formal name: COVID-19 BITCOIN). There's a 20% chance that you wallet might suddenly be empty and need resuscitation, but an almost perfect 80% chance of everything being absolutely fine ... mostly. But watch out if you manage to store you wallet on the same computer as someone else's!

    • by jma05 ( 897351 )

      > There's a 20% chance that you wallet might suddenly be empty and need resuscitation, but an almost perfect 80% chance of everything being absolutely fine.

      Yes your wallet should simultaneously be considered to be empty and full.

  • We have received all sorts of notices from companies, about how they are supporting us/them/someone during the Corona crisis.

    Some of these are well-done. A genuine service, and the company is just ensuring that they get moral credit for their action. Kudos to them for doing good, and I'm happy to take note of it.

    Most are tasteless. Marketing droids trying to capitalize on a crisis. This one is tasteless. There is zero chance that anyone is going to do anything useful on a D-Wave quantum computer, in relatio

    • Medtronic did a good one - they generously released the design files for one of their ventilators, so any factory could build them! But if you actually look at the files, they are missing most of the mechanical components - the most difficult parts to design and manufacture. So it's really just the schematic for a rather dated computer. And the small print says 'you can make them as long as the crisis continues, but it's over when we say it's over and we will sue you if you keep making them a second longer.

  • Given the vast majority of coders don't have a clue about programming these things, will they also provide crash courses on the systems?

Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food.

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