MIT Technology Review's Jason Pontin interviewed Dr. Geordie Rose about the validity of the claim that the Orion is "true" Quantum Computer: http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18495/page1/
It is an interesting interview, especially the (qu)bit about approximation (page 3). I have copied Dr. Rose, Dr. Vazirani, and Dr. Aaronson, if they want to provide more details... Dr. Scott Aaronson < http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/ >, a theoretical computer scientist at the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, Ontario has denounced the Orion for being as useful at solving problems as "a roast-beef sandwich". Similary Umesh Vazirani, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, said, "D-Wave is misleading the public by calling their device 'a practical quantum computer.' The whole point of quantum computing is achieving a large speedup over classical computers, something that D-Wave hasn't accomplished." This argument about the validity of the Orion's Quantum Computing capabilities has arisen from the fact that D-Wave has failed to provide clear details of the inner working of the Orion. "Has D-Wave really implemented a 16-qubit quantum computer, or do their qubits decohere so quickly that they are in effect implementing a classical algorithm?" asked Vazirani. "D-Wave has not provided any evidence to favor the first possibility over the second." If you are no mood to read the long interview, you can d/l the audio mp3 at: http://www.audiodizer.com/technologyreview/infotech/download.aspx?id=18495 _______________________________________________ FDE mailing list [email protected] http://www.xml-dev.com/mailman/listinfo/fde
