D-Wave announces quantum computer with twice as many qubits as predecessor

Canadian company D-Wave has presented its next quantum computer. The 2000Q has, as the name suggests, two thousand qubits on board. That is twice as much as its predecessor. The company also already has a customer who has purchased the computer.

The computer measures approximately 3x3x2 meters, according to the white paper that D-Wave has put online. Most of the space is taken up by servers and subsystems, as the 2048-qubit chip is the size of a thumbnail, the company says. In addition, strong cooling is required. To function, the qubits must be cooled to just above absolute zero of about -273 degrees Celsius. This is done in the housing insulated from the outside.

Despite that cooling, D-Wave claims that the quantum computer uses less energy than comparable supercomputers. According to the manufacturer, the 2000Q requires up to 25 kW of energy. There is also already a company that has purchased the 15 million dollar quantum computer. It concerns Temporal Defense Systems, a company that specializes in security. That will use the quantum computer to enable ‘the next generation of cybersecurity’, although both companies do not say exactly what it consists of.

There will also be a subscription service, which allows companies to perform calculations on a 2000Q. D-Wave aims to release a computer with double the amount of qubits every two years. The previous model, the D-Wave 2x, came out in 2015 and has just over a thousand qubits. The Canadian company’s computers use a technique known as quantum annealing, which means they can’t be labeled as full quantum computers. A study by NASA and Google would show that the technology is still a hundred million times faster than a regular computer when it comes to solving optimization problems.