New Delhi D-Wave Systems Inc. is the only company in the world to manufacture both quantum gates and quantum annealing computers. In an interview, D-Wave’s vice president of product management, Murray Thom, explains why the company is into building a quantum gate model, and shares his thoughts on when we might see quantum supremacy. Thom, who leads the teams engaged in customer projects related to algorithms, and performance testing, also spoke about how India performs in this area. In his previous roles at D-Wave, he was responsible for the development and distribution of the Leap Quantum Cloud service and Python-based Ocean open-source tools. Edited excerpt:
How much progress has D-Wave made with its Leap Quantum Cloud service? Can you share some adoption statistics for India?
We launched Leap in October 2018, but provided access to users in India in 2020. With over 25,000 users, India is the third largest country in terms of Leap sign-ups since launch. The number of people accessing quantum computers in the cloud through the leap from India has increased by 58% since January 2021. India is a leading country in terms of software development expertise. It has an appetite for advanced technologies, and Leap is about giving people access to technology, programming models, and how to formulate problems for systems. We have provided open-source examples to allow them to do this. We want to follow the lead of the users out there in terms of their ability to show progress with practical applications and building enterprise solutions.
You have a partnership with the University of Southern California, which works with the D-Wave quantum computer. Can you please elaborate on this?
Yes. The University of Southern California created a quantum computing center in 2011. They’ve been able to take advantage of our quantum computers to do some real cutting-edge research in quantum computing. In terms of practical applications, he has published great work including how machine learning can work with our quantum computing systems to advance data analysis for the discovery of the Higgs boson; and methods of error correction with quantum annealing. With the upgrade to D-Wave’s Advantage Quantum System—our first 5,000-plus qubit machine physically located in the U.S. at USC’s Institute of Informatics—university and D-Wave increase capacity for academic researchers, government users, and the business community will do. To continue the study of how quantum effects can accelerate the solution of complex optimization, machine learning and sampling problems, and result in breakthroughs in quantum optimization. The Advantage system (expected to feature 7,000 qubits in Advantage2 with a new qubit design) is accessible through the Leap Quantum Cloud service.
What is the explanation for adopting the gate model after betting on the quantum annealing model?
According to Boston Consulting Group, quantum computing could create a value of $450 billion to $850 billion in the next 15-30 years. Some of that is in place of quantum chemistry simulations, and differential equations. Another part of this is in optimization. If we want to be able to address quantum chemistry simulations, we need to be able to build gate model quantum computers, and D-Wave wants to be the provider of a complete quantum solution to all, which is why we use our product. are expanding the line to include gate model systems. The other important point is that using gate model machines to do the optimization is incredibly inefficient. So we need both (models) for our customers in future.
What is your strategy for simplifying quantum computing for enterprises?
D-Wave focuses on showing commercial value in practical quantum applications. We believe this is the right strategy towards building new disruptive technology. For example, Caixabank is applying quantum computing to investment hedging in the insurance sector. They use our quantum hybrid solver services to code a fast algorithm to reduce the computing time required to reach an optimal solution, improving investment portfolio hedging by up to 90% over traditional solutions. Save-On-Foods, a medium-sized grocery store chain in western Canada, reduced the time for grocery optimization from 25 hours to just two minutes using our hybrid quantum algorithm. Another example is Maintain AI, which has quantum designed proteins, synthesizes them and takes them for live testing of the COVID virus. With the open-source Python software development kit, it’s actually very accessible for people to work on problem formulations and see the practical value quickly.