INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Outside the crop of construction cranes that now dot Vancouver bright, downtown greenways, in a suburban business park that reminds you more
of dentists and tax preparers, is a small office building belonging to D-Wave
This office — squat, angular and sun-dappled one recent cool Autumn morning — is unique in that it contains an infinite collection of
parallel universes.Founded in 1999 by Geordie Rose, D-Wave worked in relative obscurity on esoteric problems associated with quantum
When Rose was a PhD student at the University of British Columbia, he turned in an assignment that outlined a quantum computing company
His entrepreneurship teacher at the time, Haig Farris, found the young physicists ideas compelling enough to give him $1,000 to buy a
computer and a printer to type up a business plan.The company consulted with academics until 2005, when Rose and his team decided to focus
on building usable quantum computers
The result, the Orion, launched in 2007, and was used to classify drug molecules and play Sodoku
The business now sells computers for up to $10 million to clients like Google, Microsoft and Northrop Grumman.&We&ve been focused on making
quantum computing practical since day one
In 2010 we started offering remote cloud access to customers and today, we have 100 early applications running on our computers (70 percent
of which were built in the cloud),& said CEO Vern Brownell
&Through this work, our customers have told us it takes more than just access to real quantum hardware to benefit from quantum computing
In order to build a true quantum ecosystem, millions of developers need the access and tools to get started with quantum.&Now their
computers are simulating weather patterns and tsunamis, optimizing hotel ad displays, solving complex network problems and, thanks to a new,
open-source platform, could help you ride the quantum wave of computer programming.Inside the boxWhen I went to visit D-Wave they gave us
unprecedented access to the inside of one of their quantum machines
The computers, which are about the size of a garden shed, have a control unit on the front that manages the temperature as well as queuing
system to translate and communicate the problems sent in by users.Inside the machine is a tube that, when fully operational, contains a
small chip super-cooled to 0.015 Kelvin, or -459.643 degrees Fahrenheit or -273.135 degrees Celsius
The entire system looks like something out of the Death Star — a cylinder of pure data that the heroes must access by walking through a
little door in the side of a jet-black cube.It quite thrilling to see this odd little chip inside its super-cooled home
As the computer revolution maintained its predilection toward room-temperature chips, these odd and unique machines are a connection to an
alternate timeline where physics is wrestled into submission in order to do some truly remarkable things.And now anyone — from kids to
PhDs to everyone in-between — can try it.Into the oceanLearning to program a quantum computer takes time
Because the processor doesn&t work like a classic universal computer, you have to train the chip to perform simple functions that your own
cellphone can do in seconds
However, in some cases, researchers have found the chips can outperform classic computers by 3,600 times
This trade-off — the movement from the known to the unknown — is why D-Wave exposed their product to the world.&We built Leap to give
millions of developers access to quantum computing
We built the first quantum application environment so any software developer interested in quantum computing can start writing and running
applications — you don&t need deep quantum knowledge to get started
If you know Python, you can build applications on Leap,& said Brownell.To get started on the road to quantum computing, D-Wave built the
The Leap is an open-source toolkit for developers
When you sign up you receive one minute worth of quantum processing unit time which, given that most problems run in milliseconds, is more
than enough to begin experimenting
A queue manager lines up your code and runs it in the order received and the answers are spit out almost instantly.You can code on the QPU
with Python or via Jupiter notebooks, and it allows you to connect to the QPU with an API token
After writing your code, you can send commands directly to the QPU and then output the results
The programs are currently pretty esoteric and require a basic knowledge of quantum programming but, it should be remembered, classic
computer programming was once daunting to the average user.I downloaded and ran most of the demonstrations without a hitch
These demonstrations — factoring programs, network generators and the like — essentially turned the concepts of classical programming
Instead of iterating through a list of factors, for example, the quantum computer creates a ¶llel universe& of answers and then
collapses each one until it finds the right answer
If this sounds odd it because it is
The researchers at D-Wave argue all the time about how to imagine a quantum computer various processes
One camp sees the physical implementation of a quantum computer to be simply a faster methodology for rendering answers
The other camp, itself aligned with Professor David Deutsch ideas presented in The Beginning of Infinity, sees the sheer number of possible
permutations a quantum computer can traverse as evidence of parallel universes.What does the code look like It hard to read without
understanding the basics, a fact that D-Wave engineers factored for in offering online documentation
For example, below is most of the factoring code for one of their demo programs, a bit of code that can be reduced to about five lines on a
However, when this function uses a quantum processor, the entire process takes milliseconds versus minutes or hours.Classical# Python
Program to find the factors of a numberdefine a functiondef print_factors(x):This function takes a number and prints the factorsprint(&The
factors of&,x,&are:&)
for i in range(1, x + 1):
if x % i == 0:
print(i)change this value for a different result.num = 320uncomment the
following line to take input from the user#num = int(input(&Enter a number: &))print_factors(num)Quantum@qpu_ha
def factor(P,
use_saved_embedding=True):####################################################################################################get
circuit####################################################################################################construction_start_time =
time.time()validate_input(P, range(2 ** 6))get constraint satisfaction problemcsp = dbc.factories.multiplication_circuit(3)get binary
quadratic modelbqm = dbc.stitch(csp, min_classical_gap=.1)we know that multiplication_circuit() has created these variablesp_vars = [‘p0&,
‘p1&, ‘p2&, ‘p3&, ‘p4&, ‘p5&]convert P from decimal to binaryfixed_variables = dict(zip(reversed(p_vars),
&{:06b}&.format(P)))
fixed_variables = {var: int(x) for(var, x) in fixed_variables.items()}fix product qubitsfor var, value in
fixed_variables.items():
bqm.fix_variable(var, value)log.debug(‘bqm construction time: %s&, time.time() &
construction_start_time)####################################################################################################run
problem####################################################################################################sample_time = time.time()get QPU
samplersampler = DWaveSampler(solver_features=dict(online=True, name=&DW_2000Q.*&))
_, target_edgelist, target_adjacency =
sampler.structureif use_saved_embedding:load a pre-calculated embeddingfrom factoring.embedding import embeddings
embedding =
embeddings[sampler.solver.id]
else:get the embeddingembedding = minorminer.find_embedding(bqm.quadratic, target_edgelist)
if bqm and not
embedding:
raise ValueError(&no embedding found&)apply the embedding to the given problem to map it to the samplerbqm_embedded =
dimod.embed_bqm(bqm, embedding, target_adjacency, 3.0)draw samples from the QPUkwargs = {}
if ‘num_reads& in
sampler.parameters:
kwargs[‘num_reads&] = 50
if ‘answer_mode& in sampler.parameters:
kwargs[‘answer_mode&] = ‘histogram&
response =
sampler.sample(bqm_embedded, **kwargs)convert back to the original problem spaceresponse = dimod.unembed_response(response, embedding,
source_bqm=bqm)sampler.client.close()log.debug(&embedding and sampling time: %s&, time.time() & sample_time)&The industry is at an
inflection point and we&ve moved beyond the theoretical, and into the practical era of quantum applications
It time to open this up to more smart, curious developers so they can build the first quantum killer app
Leap combination of immediate access to live quantum computers, along with tools, resources, and a community, will fuel that,& said Brownell
&For Leap future, we see millions of developers using this to share ideas, learn from each other and contribute open-source code
It that kind of collaborative developer community that we think will lead us to the first quantum killer app.&The folks at D-Wave created a
number of tutorials as well as a forum where users can learn and ask questions
The entire project is truly the first of its kind and promises unprecedented access to what amounts to the foreseeable future of computing
I&ve seen lots of technology over the years, and nothing quite replicated the strange frisson associated with plugging into a quantum
Like the teletype and green-screen terminals used by the early hackers like Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak, D-Wave has opened up a strange new
How we explore it us up to us.
