D-Wave Systems

D-Wave Systems, Inc. is a quantum computing company, based in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
The D-Wave One was built on early prototypes such as DWaves Orion Quantum Computer. The prototype was
a 16-qubit quantum annealing processor, demonstrated
on February 13, 2007 at the Computer History Museum
in Mountain View, California.[1] D-Wave demonstrated
what they claimed to be a 28-qubit quantum annealing
processor on November 12, 2007.[2] The chip was fabricated at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory microdevices lab in Pasadena, California.[3]
On May 11, 2011, D-Wave Systems announced DWave One, described as the worlds rst commercially
available quantum computer, operating on a 128-qubit
chipset[4] using quantum annealing (a general method for
nding the global minimum of a function by a process using quantum uctuations)[5][6][7][8] to solve optimization
problems. In May 2013, a collaboration between NASA,
Google and the Universities Space Research Association
(USRA) launched a Quantum Articial Intelligence Lab
based on the D-Wave Two 512-qubit quantum computer
that would be used for research into machine learning,
among other elds of study.[9]

Photograph of a chip constructed by D-Wave Systems Inc., designed to operate as a 128-qubit superconducting adiabatic quantum optimization processor, mounted in a sample holder.

2 History

D-Wave was founded by Haig Farris (former chair of

board), Geordie Rose (CTO and former CEO), Bob
Wiens (former CFO), and Alexandre Zagoskin[20] (former VP Research and Chief Scientist). Farris taught
On August 20, 2015, D-Wave Systems announced[10]
a business course at the University of British Columbia
[11]
the general availability of the D-Wave 2X
system, a
(UBC), where Rose obtained his Ph.D., and Zagoskin
1000+ qubit quantum computer. This was followed by
was a postdoctoral fellow. The company name refers to
[12]
an announcement
on Sept 28, 2015 that it had been
their rst qubit designs, which used d-wave superconducinstalled at the Quantum Articial Intelligence Lab at
tors.
NASAs Ames Research Center.
D-Wave operated as an oshoot from UBC, while
maintaining ties with the Department of Physics and
Astronomy.[21] It funded academic research in quantum
computing, thus building a collaborative network of research scientists. The company collaborated with several universities and institutions, including UBC, IPHT
1 Technology description
Jena, Universit de Sherbrooke, University of Toronto,
University of Twente, Chalmers University of TechnolIn June 2010, the D-Wave processor was described ogy, University of Erlangen, and Jet Propulsion Laboraas comprising a programmable[13] superconducting tory.These partnerships were listed on D-Waves website
integrated circuit with up to 128 pair-wise coupled[14] until 2005.[22][23] In June 2014 D-Wave announced a new
superconducting ux qubits.[15][16][17] The 128-qubit quantum applications ecosystem with computational processor was superseded by a 512-qubit processor in nance rm 1QB Information Technologies (1QBit) and
2013.[18] The processor is designed to implement a cancer research group DNA-SEQ to focus on solving
special-purpose quantum annealing[5][6][7][8] as opposed real-world problems with quantum hardware.[24]
to being operated as a universal gate-model quantum D-Wave operated from various locations in Vancouver,
computer.
Canada, and laboratory spaces at UBC before moving to
D-Wave maintains a list of peer-reviewed technical pub- its current location in the neighboring suburb of Burnaby.
lications by their own scientists and others on their D-Wave also has oces in Palo Alto, California and Viwebsite.[19]
enna, Virginia.
1

Orion prototype

D-WAVE TWO COMPUTER SYSTEM

classical algorithm to solve the same particular problem

as the D-Wave One.[30][31]

On February 13, 2007, D-Wave demonstrated the

Orion system, running three dierent applications at the
Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. This marked the rst public demonstration of, sup- 4.1
posedly, a quantum computer and associated service.

Lockheed Martin and D-Wave collaboration

The rst application, an example of pattern matching,

performed a search for a similar compound to a known
drug within a database of molecules. The next application computed a seating arrangement for an event subject
to compatibilities and incompatibilities between guests.
The last involved solving a Sudoku puzzle.

On May 25, 2011, Lockheed Martin signed a multiyear contract with D-Wave Systems to realize the benets based upon a quantum annealing processor applied to
some of Lockheeds most challenging computation problems. The contract included purchase of the D-Wave One
Quantum Computer System, maintenance, and associThe processors at the heart of D-Waves Orion quanated professional services.[32]
tum computing system are designed for use as hardware
accelerator processors rather than general-purpose computer microprocessors. The system is designed to solve
a particular NP-complete problem related to the two dimensional Ising model in a magnetic eld.[1] D-Wave 4.2 Optimization problem-solving in protein structure determination
terms the device a 16-qubit superconducting adiabatic
[25][26]
quantum computer processor.
According to the company, a conventional front end run- In August 2012, a team of Harvard University researchers
ning an application that requires the solution of an NP- presented results of the largest protein-folding problem
complete problem, such as pattern matching, passes the solved to date using a quantum computer. The researchers solved instances of a lattice protein folding
problem to the Orion system.
model, known as the Miyazawa-Jernigan model, on a DAccording to Geordie Rose, founder and Chief Tech- Wave One quantum computer.[33][34]
nology Ocer of D-Wave, NP-complete problems are
probably not exactly solvable, no matter how big, fast or
advanced computers get"; the adiabatic quantum computer used by the Orion system is intended to quickly
5 D-Wave Two computer system
compute an approximate solution.[27]
In early 2012, D-Wave Systems revealed a 512-qubit
quantum computer, code-named Vesuvius,[35] which was
[36]
On Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at the Neural Informa- launched as a production processor in 2013.
tion Processing Systems (NIPS) conference, a Google re- In May 2013, Catherine McGeoch, a consultant for Dsearch team led by Hartmut Neven used D-Waves pro- Wave, published the rst comparison of the technolcessor to train a binary image classier.
ogy against regular top-end desktop computers running
an optimization algorithm. Using a conguration with
439 qubits, the system performed 3,600 times as fast as
CPLEX, the best algorithm on the conventional machine,
4 D-Wave One computer system
solving problems with 100 or more variables in half a secpreOn May 11, 2011, D-Wave Systems announced the D- ond compared with half an hour. The results are [37]
sented
at
the
Computing
Frontiers
2013
conference.
Wave One, an integrated quantum computer system run-

3.1

2009 Google demonstration

ning on a 128-qubit processor. The processor used in the

D-Wave One code-named Rainier, performs a single
mathematical operation, discrete optimization. Rainier
uses quantum annealing to solve optimization problems.
The D-Wave One is claimed to be the worlds rst commercially available quantum computer system.[28] The
price will be approximately US$10,000,000.[29]
A research team led by Matthias Troyer and Daniel Lidar
found that, while there is evidence of quantum annealing
in D-Wave One, they saw no speed increase compared
to classical computers. They implemented an optimized

In March 2013 several groups of researchers at the Adiabatic Quantum Computing workshop at the Institute of
Physics in London produced evidence, though only indirect, of quantum entanglement in the D-Wave chips.[38]
In May 2013 it was announced that a collaboration between NASA, Google and the USRA launched a Quantum Articial Intelligence Lab at the NASA Advanced
Supercomputing Division at Ames Research Center in
California, using a 512-qubit D-Wave Two that would
be used for research into machine learning, among other
elds of study.[9][39]

D-Wave 2X Computer System

clusive experimental proof of quantum entanglement inside D-Wave devices.[46]

On August 20, 2015, D-Wave released general availability of their D-Wave 2X computer, with 1,152 qubits in
a Chimera graph architecture (although, due to magnetic
osets and manufacturing variability inherent in the superconductor circuit fabrication fewer than 1152 qubits
are functional and available for use. The exact number of
qubits yielded will vary with each specic processor manufactured.) This was accompanied by a report comparing speeds with high-end single threaded CPUs. Unlike
previous reports, this one explicitly stated that question
of quantum speedup was not something they were trying
to address, and focused on constant-factor performance
gains over classical hardware. For general-purpose problems, a speedup of 15x was reported, but it is worth noting that these classical algorithms benet eciently from
parallelizationso that the computer would be performing on par with, perhaps, 30 high-end single-threaded
cores.

MIT professor Scott Aaronson, who describes himself

as Chief D-Wave Skeptic, said that D-Waves 2007
demonstration did not prove anything about the workings
of the Orion computer, and that its marketing claims were
deceptive.[47] In May 2011 he said that he was retiring
as Chief D-wave Skeptic,[48] and reporting his skeptical
but positive views based on a visit to D-Wave in February 2012. Aaronson said that one of the most important
reasons for his new position on D-Wave was the 2011
Nature article.[46][49][50] In May 16, 2013 he resumed his
skeptic post. He criticizes D-Wave for blowing up results
out of proportion on press releases that claim speedups of
three orders of magnitude, in light of a paper by scientists
from ETH Zurich reporting a 128-qubit D-Wave computer being outperformed by a factor of 15 using regular
digital computers and applying classical metaheuristics
(particularly simulated annealing) to the problem that DWaves computer was specically designed to solve.[30]

The D-Wave 2X processor is based on a 2,048-qubit chip On May 16, 2013 NASA and Google, together with a
with half of the qubits disabled, but these may be re- consortium of universities, announced a partnership with
activated later on. [40] [41]
D-Wave to investigate how D-Waves computers could be
used in the creation of articial intelligence. Prior to announcing this partnership, NASA, Google, and Universities Space Research Association put a D-Wave com7 Reception
puter through a series of benchmark and acceptance tests,
which it passed.[9] Independent researchers found that DD-Wave has been regularly criticized by scientists in the Waves computers could solve some problems as much
quantum computing eld.
as 3,600 times faster than particular software packages
[9]
In 2007 Umesh Vazirani, a professor at University of Cal- running on conventional digital computers. Other indeifornia (UC) Berkeley and one of the founders of quantum pendent researchers found that dierent software packages running on a single core of a desktop computer
complexity theory, made the following criticism:[42]
can solve those same problems as fast or faster than
D-Waves computers (at least 12,000 times faster for
Their claimed speedup over classical algoquadratic assignment problems, and between 1 and 50
rithms appears to be based on a misunderstandtimes faster for quadratic unconstrained binary optimizaing of a paper my colleagues van Dam, Mosca
tion problems).[51]
and I wrote on The power of adiabatic quanIn January 2014 researchers at UC Berkeley and IBM
tum computing. That speed up unfortunately
published a classical model reproducing the D-Wave madoes not hold in the setting at hand, and therechines observed behavior, suggesting that it may not be
fore D-Waves quantum computer even if it
a quantum computer.[52]
turns out to be a true quantum computer, and
even if it can be scaled to thousands of qubits,
In March 2014, researchers at University College Lonwould likely not be more powerful than a cell
don and the University of Southern California (USC)
phone.
published a paper comparing data obtained from a DWave Two computer with three possible explanations
from classical physics and one quantum model. They
Wim van Dam, a professor at UC Santa Barbara, sumfound that their quantum model was a better t to the
marized the scientic community consensus as of 2008
experimental data than the Shin-Smith-Smolin-Vazirani
in the journal Nature Physics:[43]
classical model, and a much better t than any of the other
An article in the May 12, 2011 edition of Nature gives classical models. The authors conclude that This sugdetails which critical academics say proves that the com- gests that an open system quantum dynamical description
panys chips do have some of the quantum mechanical of the D-Wave device is well-justied even in the presproperties needed for quantum computing.[44][45] Prior to ence of relevant thermal excitations and fast single-qubit
the 2011 Nature paper, D-Wave was criticized for lacking decoherence. [53]
proof that its computer was in fact a quantum computer.
In May 2014, researchers at D-Wave, Google, USC,
Nevertheless, questions remained due to the lack of con-

10

Simon Fraser University, and National Research Tomsk

Polytechnic University published a paper containing experimental results that demonstrated the presence of entanglement among D-Wave qubits. Qubit tunneling spectroscopy was used to measure the energy eigenspectrum
of two and eight-qubit systems, demonstrating their coherence during a critical portion of the quantum annealing procedure.[54]

REFERENCES

[4] M. W. Johnson et al (2011), Quantum annealing with

manufactured spins (Nature)
[5] T. Kadowaki and H. Nishimori, Quantum annealing in
the transverse Ising model, Phys. Rev. E 58, 5355
(1998)".
[6] A. B. Finilla, M. A. Gomez, C. Sebenik and D. J. Doll,
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A study published in Science in June 2014, described as

likely the most thorough and precise study that has been
done on the performance of the D-Wave machine[55] and [7] G. E. Santoro and E. Tosatti, Optimization using quantum mechanics: quantum annealing through adiabatic
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evolution, J. Phys. A 39, R393 (2006)".
produced no quantum speedup.[56] The researchers, led
by Matthias Troyer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Tech[8] A. Das and B. K. Chakrabarti, Colloquium: Quantum
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Phys. 80, 1061 (2008)".
looking at subsets of the tests. Several possible explanations were suggested. 1) Perhaps quantum annealing [9] Choi, Charles (May 16, 2013). Google and NASA
Launch Quantum Computing AI Lab. MIT Technology
(the type of problem for which the D-Wave machine is
Review.
designed) is not amenable to a speedup. 2) Perhaps the
D-Wave 2 cannot realize a quantum speedup. 3) Per[10] D-Wave Systems Announces the General Availability of
haps the speedup exists but is masked by errors or other
the 1000+ Qubit D-Wave 2X Quantum Computer | D[57]
problems.
Wave Systems. www.dwavesys.com. Retrieved 201510-14.

Notable alumni and collaborators

[11] http://www.dwavesys.com/d-wave-two-system
[12] D-Wave Systems Announces Multi-Year Agreement To
Provide Its Technology To Google, NASA And USRAs
Quantum Articial Intelligence Lab | D-Wave Systems.
www.dwavesys.com. Retrieved 2015-10-14.

D-Wave has employed on a permanent or contract basis

several key members of the scientic community as well
as several notable business consultants. A partial list in- [13] M. W. Johnson et al., A scalable control system for a
superconducting adiabatic quantum optimization procescludes:
Jacob Biamonte

[58]

(ISI Foundation)

Alexandre Zagoskin[59] (Loughborough University)

Vern Brownell [60]

sor, Supercond. Sci. Technol. 23, 065004 (2010);

preprint available: arXiv:0907.3757
[14] R. Harris et al., Compound Josephson-junction coupler
for ux qubits with minimal crosstalk, Phys. Rev. B 80,
052506 (2009); preprint available: arXiv:0904.3784

See also

[15] R. Harris et al., Experimental demonstration of a robust

and scalable ux qubit, Phys. Rev. B 81, 134510 (2010);
preprint available: arXiv:0909.4321

AQUA@home

[16] Next Big Future: Robust and Scalable Flux Qubit, ,

September 23, 2009

Adiabatic quantum computation

Analog computer
Flux qubit

10

References

[1] Quantum Computing Demo Announcement. 2007-0119. Retrieved 2007-02-11.

[17] Next Big Future: Dwave Systems Adiabatic Quantum

Computer , October 23, 2009
[18] D-Wave Systems: D-Wave Two Quantum Computer Selected for New Quantum Articial Intelligence Initiative,
System to be Installed at NASAs Ames Research Center,
and Operational in Q3, , May 16, 2013
[19] D-Wave Web site, list of technical publications.
dwavesys.com.

[2] D-Wave Systems News. dwavesys.com.

[20] Department sta - Dr Alexandre Zagoskin - Physics Loughborough University. lboro.ac.uk.

[3] A picture of the demo chip. Hack The Multiverse.

[21] UBC Physics & Astronomy -". ubc.ca.

[22] D-Wave Systems at the Way Back Machine. 2002-1123. Archived from the original on 2002-11-23. Retrieved
2007-02-17.

[41] brian wang. Next Big Future: Dwave Systems shows

o quantum chip with 2048 physical qubits. nextbigfuture.com.

[23] D-Wave Systems at the Way Back Machine. 2005-0324. Archived from the original on 2005-03-24. Retrieved
2007-02-17.

[42] Shtetl-Optimized: D-Wave Easter Spectacular. 200704-07. Retrieved 2007-05-17.

[24] D-Wave Systems Building Quantum Application

Ecosystem, Announces Partnerships with DNA-SEQ
Alliance and 1QBit. Retrieved 2014-06-09.
[25] Kaminsky; William M. Kaminsky; Seth Lloyd (2002-1123). Scalable Architecture for Adiabatic Quantum Computing of NP-Hard Problems. Quantum Computing &
Quantum Bits in Mesoscopic Systems (Kluwer Academic)
(PDF). arXiv:quant-ph/0211152.
[26] Meglicki, Zdzislaw (2008). Quantum Computing Without
Magic: Devices. MIT Press. pp. 390391. ISBN 0-26213506-X.
[27] Yeah but how fast is it? Part 3. OR some thoughts about
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on 2006-11-19. Retrieved 2007-02-11.
[28] Learning to program the D-Wave One. Retrieved 11
May 2011.
[29] First Ever Commercial Quantum Computer Now Available for $10 Million. Retrieved 25 May 2011.
[30] Scott Aaronson (16 May 2013). D-Wave: Truth nally
starts to emerge.
[31] Quantum annealing with more than one hundred qubits.
Cornell University Library. 16 April 2013.
[32] Lockheed Martin Signs Contract with D-Wave Systems.Retrieved 2011-05-25
[33] D-Wave quantum computer solves protein folding problem. nature.com.
[34] D-Wave uses quantum method to solve protein folding
problem. phys.org.
[35] D-Wave Dees World of Critics With 'First Quantum
Cloud' - WIRED. WIRED. 22 February 2012.
[36] The black box that could change the world. The Globe
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[37] McGeoch, Catherine; Wang, Cong (May 2013).
Experimental Evaluation of an Adiabatic Quantum
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[38] Aron, Jacob (8 March 2013). Controversial quantum
computer aces entanglement tests. New Scientist. Retrieved 14 May 2013.
[39] Hardy, Quentin (16 May 2013). Google Buys a Quantum
Computer. Bits. The New York Times. Retrieved 3 June
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[40] The Future Of Quantum Computing: Vern Brownell, DWave CEO @ Compute Midwest on YouTube 4 December 2014

[43] Quantum computing: In the 'death zone'?". 2007-04-07.

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[44] Quantum annealing with manufactured spins Nature 473,
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[45] The CIA and Je Bezos Bet on Quantum Computing
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[46] Shtetl-Optimized. scottaaronson.com.
[47] Shtetl-Optimized: The Orion Quantum Computer AntiHype FAQ. 2007-02-09. Retrieved 2007-05-17.
[48] Shtetl-Optimized. scottaaronson.com.
[49] Shtetl-Optimized: Thanksgiving Special: D-Wave at
MIT. 2007-11-22. Retrieved 2007-12-03.
[50] In Defence of D-Wave.
[51] D-Wave: comment on comparison with classical computers. 2013-06-10. Retrieved 2013-06-20.
[52] Shin, Seung Woo; Graeme Smith; John A. Smolin; Umesh
Vazirani (28 January 2014). How 'Quantum' is the DWave Machine?". arXiv:1401.7087 [quant-ph].
[53] Walter Vinci, Tameem Albash, Anurag Mishra, Paul A.
Warburton, Daniel A. Lidar Distinguishing Classical and
Quantum Models for the D-Wave Device (17 Mar 2014)
http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.4228
[54] Verication Required. aps.org.
[55] Helmut Katzgraber, quoted in (Cho 2014).
[56] Cho, Adrian (20 June 2014), Quantum or not, controversial computer yields no speedup, Science 344 (6190):
13301331, doi:10.1126/science.344.6190.1330, PMID
24948715.
[57] Rnnow, Troels F.; Wang, Zhihui; Job, Joshua; Boixo,
Sergio; Isakov, Sergei V.; Wecker, David; Martinis, John
M.; Lidar, Daniel A.; Troyer, Matthias (25 July 2014),
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(6195): 420424, doi:10.1126/science.1252319, PMID
25061205.
[58] Faculty | Dr Jacob Biamonte | Physics | University of Oxford. qubit.org. Retrieved 2013-09-04.
[59] Department sta | Dr Alexandre Zagoskin | Physics
| Loughborough University. Lboro.ac.uk. Retrieved
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[60] CrunchBase.

11

11

External links

Ocial website
Announcement of the 16-qubit quantum computer
demonstration. Jan 19, 2007.
Quantum Computing Day 2: Image Recognition
with an Adiabatic Quantum Computer on YouTube
Karimi, Kamran; Dickson, Neil G.; et all (Jan
27, 2011). Investigating the Performance of
an Adiabatic Quantum Optimization Processor.
arXiv:1006.4147. Theoretical performance of a DWave processor
Ghosh, A.; Mukherjee, S. (Dec 2, 2013).
Quantum Annealing and Computation:
A
Brief Documentary Note (pdf). Science and
Culture 79: 485500. arXiv:1310.1339.

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D-Wave Systems Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems?oldid=699685200 Contributors: The Anome, William Avery,

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