Meet Eric Ladizinsky, the Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at D-Wave system. I have watched most of his presentations on YouTube. In future posts, I will include a collection of his presentations about the evolution of D-Wave and his explanation of D-Wave architecture. He is brilliant and has excellent communication skills explaining the quantum concept in a simple format, so a non-scientist, like myself, can understand.
Two-three years ago, I didn't know that quantum computers are not all created equal and function the same way, although all of them tap into nature to solve human's intractable problems. The Google and IBM companies (and a few more) offer a universal gate-based platform that is supposed to solve almost every intractable problem we know.
Another group, such as ionQ, is also a gate-based concept but uses atoms (ions) vs. superconducting (man-made) qubits, which is a suitable platform for general quantum computing, although a bit slower processing speed, but runs at higher fidelity than superconducting systems.
The super conducting systems such as google and IBM although they run faster, they are currently more error-prone.
There is another one; the D-Wave system that uses SQUIDS (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device) concept.
Based on running sample applications. D-Wave system seems to be an excellent tool for optimization solutions. In this short post, I cover the D-Wave system and try to make sense of this method of quantum computing for the reader. It is also worth mention that, D-Wave is working on a gate-based superconducting solution.
D-Wave system - The energy landscape experts.
Before I tell you about the D-Wave Annealing system, I need to briefly cover the thermodynamics and adiabatic concepts. Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, radiation, and physical properties of matter. In thermodynamics, an adiabatic process is a type of thermodynamic process which occurs without transferring heat or mass between the system and its surroundings. Unlike an isothermal process, an adiabatic process transfers energy to the surroundings only as work. In this system, cleverly, that and another peculiar property of quantum mechanics used for computation!
With that said, D-wave system is an adiabatic quantum computer, not a superconducting one, making it suitable for solving intractable optimization problems, chemical simulation of drugs, and sorting through enormous databases, among other things. This quantum computer can solve problems far more efficient than today's supercomputers, for specific applications. The adiabatic computer was built by the company D-wave systems first in the world. This company was founded by Vern Brownell, and Jordi rose in Canada, but Eric Ladizinsky is the guy who designed the system. Here is the web site. There, you can find everything you need to know in detail.
Based on their information, they began in Canada's Physics and Astronomy Department of the University of British Columbia, but it later became an independent entity. The idea of building a quantum computer system was born out of scientists' experiments with superconducting materials. The basic elements of D-waves computer processors are called SQUIDs superconducting quantum interference devices (similar to qubits but not the same,) which are some of the most sensitive devices used to measure the intensity of the magnetic field.
In simple words, squid is a certain kind of superconducting ring divided by what is known as the Josephson Junction. Speaking of Josephson Junction, I need to tell you about the Josephson Junction a little bit.
Josephson Junction is an electrical device in which two superconducting metals are separated by a thin layer of insulator, across which an electric current may flow in the absence of a potential difference. The current may be made to oscillate in proportion to an applied potential difference temperature, and their relation to energy, radiation, and physical properties of matter.
The superconducting materials that make up these devices have specific unique properties. Thanks to these unique properties, at extremely low temperatures nearing absolute zero, quantum uniqueness takes precedence over the classic principles of physics that we are accustomed to. For example, in the cooled superconductor or squid, the phenomenon of electrical resistance does not occur at all.
And due to a phenomenon known as the Meissner effect, some objects can even levitate. What is Meissner effect? Quantum magnetic levitation boils down to something called the Meissner effect, which only occurs when a material is cold enough to behave like a superconductor.
Unlike the single-atom transistor, here, the form of a qubit is the direction of movement of many united electrons. In other words, here, zeros and ones (On or Off switch in transistors) describe the direction of flow of electrical current through the superconducting rings; the clockwise flowing current corresponds to zero, while the counter-clockwise flowing current corresponds to one.
The entire computerization process in this type of model is based on the probabilistic method of what's known as quantum annealing. quantum annealing consists of finding the optimal values among all possible solutions. The name of this method is derived from annealing in metallurgy, which is a technique of controlling the temperature of the cooled metal alloy. Slow cooling allows for the formation of ordered crystalline structures. In quantum annealing, the magnetic field is the equivalent of temperature. For instance, to find the lowest Valley during a hike in mountainous terrain, we would have to track across the terrain to finally arrive at the right place. Quantum Mechanics reduces this search. quantum tunneling is a unique phenomenon that allows the micro-world particles to cross the walls contrary to the law of conservation of energy.
Thanks to quantum "tunneling," (not superposition), the electrons searching for the lowest point in the given terrain would not have to cross it up and down because it would have the ability to penetrate through those intuitive mountains, allowing for much more efficient searches. If the controlled variations in the magnetic field during this walk of electrons are sufficiently slow, then, once that magnetic field is turned off, we should arrive at the correct solution, which would be the lowest point of the area in this analogy.
D-Wave's first client was Lockheed Martin, which at the end of 2010, purchased a 128 qubit (there is 512 and 1024 annealing qubit version available) D-wave one computer for $10 million in 2013, spot-Checking Millions of Lines of Code. The hardware used for Artificial Intelligence, improvement of voice activation, device technology, development of new drugs, climate change, modeling, optimization of traffic control, development of robotics, machine navigation, and shape recognition.
Quantum annealing is a metaheuristic for finding the global minimum of a given objective function over a given set of candidate solutions, by a process using quantum fluctuations.
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