Peter Wilson
Sun
The scientific world will be watching Tuesday — not without skepticism — when Vancouver theoretical physicist Geordie Rose unveils what he believes is the first marketable quantum computer.
If everything goes well, the Silicon Valley demonstration by Burnaby-based D-Wave Systems, could mark the first major step toward commercial quantum computing. It’s the next wave of computer technology and uses quantum mechanics for its operations.
It holds the possibility, for instance, of allowing a life sciences company to run 50 billion possible scenarios for a new drug and then picking out the one that works.
Not that D-Wave’s 16-qubit Orion computer is capable of doing that. (A qubit is the smallest unit of information in quantum computing and is exponentially larger than a traditional bit.)
“The current system is not competitive with state-of-the-art conventional processes in terms of speed,” said Rose, D-Wave’s founder and chief technology officer, in an interview Friday.
“What we want to show is what we’re working on and where we’re going. What we have now is an end-to-end working system, one of whose components is the quantum processor.”
Rose will make his presentation at the Computer History Museum in California, while the quantum computer itself will be in the lab in Burnaby.
Rose will demonstrate:
– A search for a three dimensional shape — in this case a molecule structure — in a database of similar shapes.
– Third-party software that assigns seats for events such as weddings where attendees have preferences about where they want to sit in relation to others.
– A Sudoku puzzle solver.
“We’re also going to present a road map that shows, if we’re correct, that in two years we will have with us a system that can beat conventional processes most of the time,” said Rose. “Then we believe the system will be powerful enough to be a very compelling possible addition to a large company’s repertoire of tools.”
Rose knows that there will be skepticism and says he welcomes it. “People won’t just accept what you say. That’s not the way the world works. You have to show what you’re doing is real.”
Rose is hoping that the demonstration will attract potential co-developers who will come to Burnaby and, as he says, “kick the tires.”
“We want people who will help us take this to the next stage, even before the machines are ready for prime time,” said Rose.
While others are working on quantum computing, Rose says the D-Wave effort is the only one directed toward a commercial product. The result could be computers on which D-Wave will offer computing time or machines that can be boxed up and placed on-site with major firms.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
