Infinity Machine - Quantum Computer Promises to Solve Most Complex Problems

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Founded in 1999, D-Wave’s mission is to “integrate new discoveries in physics and computer science into breakthrough new approaches to computation.” It’s backed by several high-profile investors, including Jeff Bezos, Nasa, the CIA, the BDC and Goldman Sachs, among several others.

“The Infinity Machine” as TIME dubs it promises to “solve some of humanities most complex problems”. It’s flagship product, the D-Wave Two is a black box measuring 10 ft. high, with a cylindrical cooling apparatus containing a niobium computer chip that’s been chilled to -459.6°F, “almost 2° colder than the Boomerang Nebula...colder than interstellar space.”

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“The D-Wave Two is an unusual computer, and D-Wave is an unusual company. It’s small, and it has very few customers, but they’re blue-chip: they include the defense contractor Lockheed Martin; a computing lab that’s hosted by NASA and largely funded by Google; and a U.S. intelligence agency that D-Wave executives decline to name. The system sells for between $10 and $15 million.

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The reason D-Wave has so few customers is that it makes a new type of computer called a quantum computer that’s so radical and strange, people are still trying to figure out what it’s for and how to use it. It could represent an enormous new source of computing power —it has the potential to solve problems that would take conventional computers centuries, with revolutionary consequences for fields ranging from cryptography to nanotechnology, pharmaceuticals to artificial intelligence.”

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Quantum computing leverages quantum mechanics to create computers that aren’t merely upgrades of the today’s conventional computers — they work in a completely different way. While today’s computers have data in binary digits — known as bits, each a 0 or 1 — quantum computing uses quantum bits — qubits — that can be in more than one state simultaneously.

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