Is This The First Quantum Computer In The World?

A Canadian company claimed following words on their website: "D-Wave Systems builds the world's first and only commercial quantum computers. The scientists, engineers and executives here are among the many people who have contributed to this historic achievement" (D-Wave, n.d.). In 2011, D-Wave systems developed their first computing device based on the superconductivity theory. Since that first device released, the D-Wave Systems have made two improvement models on the original one. The first improvement model is the D-Wave-2 released in 2013, and the second improvement model is the D-Wave-2X released in 2015. The D-Wave Systems are confident of these systems are Quantum Computers, because they think their system's principle is based on Quantum theory. The D-Wave Systems have made a series of the educational videos about their systems, let's watch one of these videos embedded at bottom of this post and check out how they explain their systems work internally.

There are many arguments and questions to D-Wave systems with the academic field. The researchers
at IBM and the University of California are questioning these D-Wave computing devices are manufactured on quantum mechanics (PCWorld, n.d.).  In Quantum Mechanics theory, the Quantum is recognized as the subatomic level individual particles, but the moving behaver of these particles are showing as a kind of wave. It is no evidence the D-Wave system based on this kind of particles. But the D-Wave argument "a successful theory needs to explain all the existing experimental results, not just a narrowly selected subset of them". We have to admit these D-Wave systems are not working on same principle as current widely used digital computers.

In academic field, most scientists think if a device is called Quantum Computer, which should be manufactured on the Quantum Mechanics theory, which should utilize following two or three basic Quantum characteristics in the computation operations: (1) Qubit: which is the subatomic level particle(s) used to express a Quantum bit ; (2) Superposition: which should be used to store or present the value of a qubit; (3) Entanglement: which should be used to read or transmit the value of a qubit. From such a angle to observe, the Quantum Computer does not exist yet (IQC, n.d.).

If the Quantum Computer does not exist yet, then what we should call the D-Wave system, because these systems are indeed developed on the concept of qubit and superposition. It looks the key difference is the physic size of the qubit. The qubit in an ideal Quantum Computer is operated on the subatomic level particles (which is real Quantum), but the qubit in the D-Wave system is operated on a tiny piece of superconductor (which is simulated Quantum). The D-Wave system utilize the circle electric current in a tiny piece of superconductor to simulate the Quantum rotation, which makes the superconductivity in a tiny material showing the Quantum characteristics, so that the work principle of these D-Wave devices meet some of the principle of a Quantum Computer.

Based on above analysis, we may find the D-Wave system might not be the ideal Quantum Computer which most scientists are searching for, but they are indeed the best simulation devices which made some very good practice with Quantum Computer theory.

(Note: This article is written for a student assignment, many statements are just author's personal opinion, so it is not a proper resource for any academic reference.)

Reference

CanadianContent. (n.d.). Quantum Computers. [Cool article]. [Online]. Available at: http://forums.canadiancontent.net/computers-internet/128801-quantum-computers-cool-article.html [Accessed: 27 January 2016].

Dwave. (n.d.). Quantum Computing | D-Wave Systems. [Online]. Available at: http://www.dwavesys.com/quantum-computing [Accessed: 27 January 2016].

IQC. (n.d.). Quantum computing 101 | Institute for Quantum Computing. [Online]. Available at: https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/quantum-computing-101#What-is-quantum-computing [Accessed: 27 January 2016].

PCWorld. (n.d.). IBM questions the performance of D-Wave’s quantum computer | PCWorld. [Online]. Available at: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2094380/ibm-questions-the-performance-of-dwaves-quantum-computer.html [Accessed: 27 January 2016].