D-Wave claims leap in quantum computing

London

D-Wave Systems Inc has sold its quantum computers to Google and US defence contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. It has now begun selling a new, more-powerful machine.

A single unit of quantum data is called a quantum bit, or "qubit", and the Burnaby, Canada-based company said its new device has a processor capable of handling 2,000 of them at any instant - twice as many as the previous version. D-Wave also said that initial benchmark tests had shown achievable performance was as much as 1,000 times greater than the predecessor. "We are seeing an advantage over the best of what you can do classically," Vern Brownell, D-Wave's chief executive officer, said in a telephone interview, referring to classical computing.