Start-up demos quantum computer:
The Canadian company on Tuesday gave a public demonstration of Orion, its quantum computer, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. D-Wave said it is going to try to sell computing services to corporate customers in the first quarter of 2008.Quantum computers, which researchers have experimented with for years but which haven’t yet existed outside of the laboratory, are radically different than today’s electronic computers. D-Wave’s computer is based around a silicon chip that houses 16 “qubits,” the equivalent of a storage bit in a conventional computer, connected to each other. Each qubit consists of dots of the element niobium surrounded by coils of wire.
When electrical current comes down the wire, magnetic fields are generated, which, in turn, causes the change in the state of the qubit. [...] Ultimately, D-Wave’s computer is an analog computer, according to Alexey Andreev, a venture capitalist at Harris & Harris and an investor in D-Wave. Answers to programs run on the computer come in the form of a physical simulation.
The “probability distribution generator” didn’t actually make the trip to California:
The computer itself — which is cooled down to 4 millikelvin (or nearly minus 273.15 degrees Celsius) with liquid helium — was actually in Canada. Attendees only saw the results on a screen.
(Hat tip to John.)