For the ones that don't want to read the whole post, the Truth is that the 3600 speedup claimed in this article: Commercial quantum computer leaves PC in the dust [1](HN discussion: [2]) isn't worth much.
Quoting Scott Aaronson's post:
As I said above, at the time McGeoch and Wang’s paper was released to the media [...] the “highly tuned implementation” of simulated annealing that they ask for had already been written and tested, and the result was that it outperformed the D-Wave machine on all instance sizes tested. In other words, their comparison to CPLEX had already been superseded by a much more informative comparison—one that gave the “opposite” result—before it ever became public. For obvious reasons, most press reports have simply ignored this fact.
"The majority of that post is simply factually incorrect.
I used to find this stuff vaguely amusing in an irritating kind of way. Now I just find it boring and I wonder why anyone listens to a guy who’s been wrong exactly 100% of the time about everything. Update your priors, people!!
If you want to know what’s really going on, listen to the real experts. Like Hartmut. [2]"
[1] Contains no explanation about how Aaronson is 100% wrong. It is pure FUD. He won't actually argue points because that would allow Aaronson to rebut his rebuttal.
[2] has little information, and no numbers, or comparisons to other techniques. All it says is "Quantum Computing is Cool! And we're working on NP hard problems." It does say that they have a quantum computer from Dwave, but they make no claims as to it's actual power.
Adding emphasis to the main objectives from [2] "to study how quantum computing might advance machine learning." They're still researching things. [1] is a clear attempt to leverage the respectability of Google without actually addressing Aaronson's points.
"Even if D-Wave managed to build (say) a coherent 1,024-qubit machine satisfying all of its design specs, it’s not obvious it would outperform a classical computer on any problem of practical interest. This is true both because of the inherent limitations of the adiabatic algorithm, and because of specific concerns about the Ising spin graph problem. On the other hand, it’s also not obvious that such a machine wouldn’t outperform a classical computer on some practical problems. The experiment would be an interesting one! Of course, this uncertainty — combined with the more immediate uncertainties about whether D-Wave can build such a machine at all, and indeed, about whether they can even produce two-qubit entanglement — also means that any talk of “lining up customers” is comically premature."
* Dwave built the machines
* Aaronson concedes that Dwave has achieved entanglement with a quantum annealing system for its full 512 qubits.
* there were two big sales (Lockheed, Google)
There will be a quantum computer with over 100 qubits of processing capability sold either as a hardware system or whose use is made available as a commercial service by Dec 31, 2010.
128 qubit system was sold in 2010.
Quantum entangled annealing is proven in the USC paper of the 128 qubit system that was sold.
Also the funny part is that there are many nice ML algos that do not need harsh optimisations or even do not need optimisation at all (see random ferns for instance). Thus it might be hype for hype.
The 3600x speedup is correct. You can't compare the 'exact' solution of the D-Wave problem in the d-wave machine with a probabilistic algorithm like Simmulated Annealing. Sure, in practice you're using the approximate algos, with their comparable speedup.
I think the "skeptics" will bash D-Wave until, but probably after their systems are running circles around traditional computing.
Quoting Scott Aaronson's post: As I said above, at the time McGeoch and Wang’s paper was released to the media [...] the “highly tuned implementation” of simulated annealing that they ask for had already been written and tested, and the result was that it outperformed the D-Wave machine on all instance sizes tested. In other words, their comparison to CPLEX had already been superseded by a much more informative comparison—one that gave the “opposite” result—before it ever became public. For obvious reasons, most press reports have simply ignored this fact.
[1] http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23519-commercial-quant...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5697619