The Quantum Pontiff

Customer X: Hi, D-wave? So, I hear that you have this computer that can be used to solve computationally hard problems. Oh, yes, sorry, should have said a quantum computer, my bad. Well, you know we’ve got this hard computational problem, [Editor: problem description deleted to protect identity of involved company.] So what do you think, can you solve this problem for me? Great! Let me put you in contact with my technical guy. Yes, I’ll wire the money to your account today.

Months later.
Customer X: Hi D-Wave, thanks for all your help with getting us set up to use your machine to solve these hard computational problems. We ran the adiabatic algorithm a few times, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Do you have any suggestions? Oh, try a different adiabatic annealing schedule, okay, I’ll pass this on to my technical guy. Thanks for your help. Is it still raining in Vancouver?

A day later.
Customer X: So we tried a new annealing schedule, but it didn’t seem to help. Well it helped on a few of our instances, but not all of them. Any suggestions? Okay I can hold. [Celine Dion music ensues for twenty minutes.] Right. Your tech guys suggest this particular annealing schedule. Great, we’ll try that! How’s the rain?

An hour later
Customer X: Well okay, so we tried that one and again it got a few more answers correct, but now it doesn’t work on the other instances. Can you tell me where that annealing schedule came from? Oh, I understand company secret. Okay can you send me another annealing schedule? Rain again? Sheesh, Noah would have loved Vancouver.

Days later, many annealing strategies shown not to work.
Customer X: So, um, I guess I should have asked this when we started, but what understanding do you have about the speed-ups guaranteed by your machine? I mean, certainly you have at least some evidence that the machine will be able to solve the instances that matter, right? Or at least tell me if my instances will be sped up on your computer? Hello? Hello?

[This blog post brought to you by the letter R and the quote "For now the adiabatic quantum optimizers have the upper hand."]

The Optimizer has gotten tired of everyone asking him about D-wave and gone and written a tirade about the subject. Like all of the optimizer’s stuff it’s a fun read. But, and of course I’m about to get tomatoes thrown on me for saying this, I have to say that I disagree with Scott’s assessment of the situation. (**Ducks** Mmm, tomato goo.) Further while I agree that people should stop bothering Scott about D-wave (I mean the dudes an assistant professor at an institution known for devouring these beasts for breakfast), I personally think the question of whether or not D-wave will succeed is one of the most important and interesting questions in quantum computing. The fact that we interface with this black box of a company via press releases, an occasional paper, and blog posts at rose blog, for me, makes it all the funner! Plus my father was a lawyer, so if you can’t argue the other side of the argument, well you’re not having any fun! So, in defense of D-wave…

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What are the big questions in quantum computing?

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Hm, looks like D-wave has a new CEO. Not sure when this occurred (?), but a reader sends along an email with an announcement from a recruiting (?) firm:

Lonergan Partners is pleased to announce that Vern Brownell has been named President and Chief Executive Officer of D-Wave Systems….

Vern Brownell joins D-Wave from Egenera, were he held various executive roles including CEO. Egenera was founded by Mr. Brownell in 2000 based on his experiences as the Chief Technology Officer at Goldman Sachs, where he and his staff of 1,300 were responsible for worldwide technology infrastructure including computing platforms, datacenters, data networking, telecommunications, and trading-floor operations. Prior to his tenure at Goldman, Brownell served in various management and engineering roles at Stratus Computer, Ztel, and Digital Equipment. He holds an MBA degree from Anna Maria College and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Now I have a new goal in life. Make sure I maintain more followers on twitter than the D-wave CEO, @vbrownell! (And hope he didn’t see my tweets today about quantum computing!) But CTO of Goldman Sachs…that’s the big times

An interesting paper on the arXiv’s today, arXiv:0908.2782, “Adiabatic quantum optimization fails for random instances of NP-complete problems” by Boris Altshuler, Hari Krovi, and Jeremie Roland. Trouble for D-wave?

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In Vienna, Virginia on April 23-25th a workshop is being held in response to a report, “A Federal Vision for Quantum Information Science” issued by the United States National Science and Technology Council. While this workshop looks, from the outside, like any other typical quantum computing workshop, this is a bit deceiving, as from what I understand this workshop is supposed to provide the impetus for a report arguing for a major spending for quantum information science in the United States, especially from the National Science Foundation. The Quantum Pontiff, unfortunately, is stuck unquantumly pontificating before his intro to computer science theory students, so he won’t be able to attend the workshop. Which is all to say this is as good of place as any to write down my own thoughts on what a national initiative in quantum computing should look like. (Of course my qualifications to make such a judgment are thin at best, being a second-rate pseudo professor from the nether regions of quantum computing. But ain’t blogs great. On the internet no one knows you’re a research assistant professor!)

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• Most powerful ever quantum computer chip in tests – 18 February 2009 – New Scientist
  the prototype chip built by D-Wave Systems in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, is designed to handle 128 qubits of information.
• Observation of Unconventional Quantum Spin Textures in Topological Insulators — Hsieh et al. 323 (5916): 919 — Science
  Very cool result and agood step for topological quantum computing.

Science is full of hard problems. One hard problem is protein folding. Indeed vast amounts of computer power have been thrown at this problem. So one wouldn’t think that the computer we’ve got sitting on top of our body would be much use for this problem. But is this true? Can humans fold proteins better than computers? Enter onto the scene foldit developed by a group of researchers here at the University of Washington.

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New leader at the Perimeter Institute this Friday, Perimeter researcher wins prestigious award, a summer school on quantum cryptography, the answer is not quantum physics, and quarter charge quasiparticles for quantum computing.

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Hoisted from the comments, Rod says

You guys are much more blunt than I usually am (except with students . You’re also a lot more succinct.

This particular paper may be wrong, and the authors should be told that, but: as the field grows, and more engineers join, there are going to be more people who start with naive positions. The goal is not to run them off, but to teach them, so they can help us build these things .

To which, of course, I can only plead guilty, guilty, guilty. I mean no harm to engineers, that is for sure, especially considering the fact that I am surrounded by them And damn straight I know how important engineers will be in building a quantum computer, and that physicists all by themselves are more likely to be doomed in this endeavor (but I might add that D-wave or Transmeta might demonstrate that just having the engineering bravado isn’t necessarily enough. Damn straight sometimes those physics and theory people know what the hell they are talking about.)

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The ads on scienceblogs today lead me to find out that, apparently, I can buy a quantum computer right here from Seattle based REI:

And only $70 bucks! Jeez, those D-wave investors overpaid. I wonder how you use it to factor? But the number in the bag and wait?

Over at Emergent Chaos I found an article which throws down the gauntlet over quantum computers. And there isn’t anything I cherish more than gauntlets thrown down!

Note: I should preface this by saying that I don’t consider myself a over the top hyper of quantum computers in the sense attacked by the author. I find quantum computers fascinating, would really like to see if one can be built, but find the hyperbole that accompanies any small advance in the field a bit over the top. However I also think the article misses a lot of important points (and insinuates that people haven’t actually thought about these points, something which I find as annoying as quantum computing hype.)

Update: Say it ain’t so Bruce. Say it ain’t so.

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