In a nice instance of synchronicity, I was just reading a paper by Scott Aaronson, "NP-Complete Problems and Physical Reality" [1]. The paper talks a little bit about the quantum adiabatic method, which seems to be similar to simulated annealing, with similar limitations (on specially chosen SAT problems, the method can have difficulty overcoming local optima; see page 6 for discussion).
So, D-Wave may be selling an expensive simulated annealing hardware implementation, rather than a quantum computer.
So, D-Wave may be selling an expensive simulated annealing hardware implementation, rather than a quantum computer.
1: http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/npcomplete.pdf