Not quite what you expected

Have you ever felt a bit ripped off? Like you haven’t quite got what was advertised? Then you may well have sympathy for some unlikely cohorts. NASA and Google share a £9.1m computer which its makers, D-Wave, claim is no less than the world’s first commercially available quantum computer. However there is a problem, no one seems entirely certain that it is, in fact, a quantum computer at all. A recent study – as yet unpublished I should stress – has found that for some tasks the computer has performed no faster than a standard desktop machine. But worse than this, the researchers from ETH Zurich found no evidence that the D-Wave Two was in any way exploiting quantum mechanics. Now, in their defence, D-Wave say that the tests performed were not the tasks that their type of quantum computing ­– known as adiabatic quantum computing – was designed to excel at. So the picture is a complex one. But there is something else here. Hidden under the surface of this ‘is it or isn’t it?’ spat a larger battle is raging. A battle between hubris and humble advancement; between exploitation and understanding; between marketing and scientific discussion. In short, it is a clash between academia and commercialism, one which I think reveals a deeper truth about what it is to be a scientist. You see, one of the reasons why controversy surrounds D-Wave is that from the outset they have been unapologetically business orientated. Nothing inherently wrong with that of course, yet when claims of scientific importance are made via the press release rather than the peer reviewed journal, then many academics begin to get suspicious. Despite the reputation of D-Wave steadily increasing over the last 5 years, Scott Aaronson – a computer scientist at MIT– maintains the company is run by “marketing types who are trying to make the most dramatic claims possible”. Harsh words, but they highlight the void that can sometimes exist between the world of economics and the world of pure research. Unwittingly, quantum computing has found itself on the frontline of an ideological cold-war between business and science. The two can of course live together – indeed, symbiotically so – but on occasion, when two tectonic plates collide the underlying turmoil punctures the surface. The fact is they have different goals. One craves financial reward, the other truth. But I suspect that for quantum computing research, a middle way will be found. Computers are, after all, produced to fulfil a wide spread hunger for faster calculations – and widespread hunger is often best satiated by business. And so while the debate over D-Wave continues, the next generation of computer scientists remain convinced quantum computing is the future ­and on page 20 we find out why it is that a component more familiar with conventional computing may hold the key to its future. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM0nUReyFkU