Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) that the first commercial quantum optimization processor actually works, according to reports.
"The team demonstrated that the D-Wave processor housed at the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center behaves in a manner that indicates that quantum mechanics has a functional role in the way it works," USC said in a news release. "The demonstration involved a small subset of the chip's 128 qubits."
USC researchers ran extensive tests to ensure the processor is running properly.
"Using a specific test problem involving eight qubits, we have verified that the D-Wave processor performs optimization calculations [that is, finds lowest-energy solutions] using a procedure that is consistent with quantum annealing and is inconsistent with the predictions of classical annealing," Daniel Lidar, scientific director of the Quantum Computing Center and one of the researchers on the team, stated in the news release.
Quantum annealing is a method of solving optimization problems using quantum mechanics, according to the press release. The research showed that the chip performed well, demonstrating the potential for quantum optimization on a larger-than-ever scale.
"Our work seems to show that, from a purely physical point of view, quantum effects play a functional role in information processing in the D-Wave processor," said Sergio Boixo, first author of the research paper, who conducted the research while he was a computer scientist at ISI and research assistant professor at USC Viterbi.
The news comes two months after the upgrade of the Quantum Computing Center's original D-Wave processor, better known as the Rainier chip. A new 512-qubit Vesuvius chip was added to the processor.
"The computing center, which includes a magnetically shielded box that is kept frigid (near absolute zero) to protect the computer against decoherence, was designed to be upgradable to keep up with the latest developments in the field," USC said.
For an in-depth look at the quantum processor, click here.
