How much progress has D-Wave made with its Leap quantum cloud service? Can you share some adoption numbers 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-highest country in terms of LEAP sign-ups since the launch. The number of people accessing quantum computers in the cloud through 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 all about providing people with access so that they can learn the technology, the programming models, and how to formulate problems for the system. We’ve provided open-source examples to allow them to do it. We want to follow the lead of the users there in terms of their ability to show progress with practical applications and building enterprise solutions.
You have a partnership with University of Southern California, which works with a D-Wave quantum computer. Can you please elaborate on it?
Yes. The University of Southern California built a quantum computing centre in 2011. They have been able to leverage our quantum computer to do some real cutting-edge research in quantum computing. In terms of practical applications, they have published great work, including how machine learning can work with our quantum computing systems to advance data analysis for the discovery of Higgs bosons; and methods for doing 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 US at USC’s Information Sciences Institute—the university and D-Wave will increase the capacity for academic researchers, government users, and the business community to continue studying how quantum effects may speed up the solution of complex optimization, machine learning and sampling problems, and breakthrough results in quantum optimization. The Advantage system (Advantage2 is expected to feature 7,000 qubits with a new qubit design) is accessible via the Leap quantum cloud service.
What explains the adoption of the gate model after betting on the quantum annealing model?
According to Boston Consulting Group, quantum computing can create value of $450 billion to $850 billion in the next 15-30 years . Some of that is in the space of quantum chemistry simulations, and differential equations. Another portion of it is in optimization. If we want to be able to address the quantum chemistry simulations, we need to be able to build the gate model quantum computers, and D-Wave wants to be the provider of everyone’s full quantum solution, which is why we’re expanding our product line to include the gate model systems. The other important thing is that using gate model machines to do optimization is incredibly inefficient. Therefore, we need both (models) for our customers in the future.
What’s your strategy to simplify quantum computing for enterprises?
D-Wave is focused on showing the business value in practical quantum applications. We believe this is the right strategy towards building a new disruptive technology. For example, CaixaBank is applying quantum computing in investment hedging in the insurance sector. They use our quantum hybrid solver services to code a faster algorithm to reduce the computing time needed to reach an optimal solution to improve investment portfolio hedging by up to 90% over the traditional solution. Save-On-Foods, a mid-sized grocery store chain in Western Canada used our hybrid quantum algorithms to reduce the time for grocery optimization from 25 hours to just two minutes. Another example is Menten AI, which has quantum designed proteins, synthesized them and taken them for live testing of 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.
When do we see quantum supremacy happening?
There’s a lot of focus on whether we do a calculation that nobody could do with classical computing. It will be an important milestone. But what we’re focused on right now is how can businesses use it to better what they’re doing today. We’re focused closely on that commercial advantage, and we’re already seeing it.
When do you see the world getting a stable quantum computer?
Your users might be surprised to hear this but quantum computing in the cloud is stable right now—we’ve got 99% uptime for our quantum computers. You can program the system and get responses back in seconds. There’s so much mystery and complexity about quantum computing -- it’s a blessing and a curse, and we have to live with that complexity and make it simple for people to see how to program it. Our 5000-qubit quantum computer is the largest programmable quantum computer that’s available today. There’s a technology stack of powerful algorithms that people are developing to leverage it in these hybrid contexts. There are already cases where people are basically able to make their businesses more efficient, more responsive to these kinds of supply chain disruptions to allow us to basically adapt and become efficient in order to keep our operations functioning using quantum computing technology. We have really realized we need to focus on practical quantum computing -- the whole industry needs to focus on that. I think users and enterprises and CIOs are really going to find that it helps them.
But do we have enough skilled programmers for quantum computing?
You don’t have to be a quantum physicist to program quantum computers. It’s our job to bring programming tools that are familiar like Python programming kits with accelerated C++ algorithms. We have to do more in terms of making the mathematical aspects much more digestible and easier to see. That’s why we’re focused on these open-source examples such as the n queens (problem of placing n queens on an n x n chessboard such that no two queens attack each other) example. That’s not because a lot of folks are working on chess examples in the industry. Rather, when you’re programming a calendar for a workforce, you need to know how am I going to use variables to describe the days of the week or the hours in the day, and the techniques that are shown in those test examples on how to choose those parameters.
Advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), etc., appear to be leveraging quantum computing.
The cloud was the best thing that ever happened to quantum computing (D-Wave’s Leap is cloud-based). IoT is allowing people to operate their business more efficiently with sensors, but they (businesses) also need more advanced planning and optimization techniques to be able to leverage that effectively. AI also needs advanced compute tools, and there’s a very close connection between the underlying instructions that quantum computers are working on the optimization problems and the types of models that are used in AI and Machine Learning. There’s a lot of complementary work that’s happening here -- sometimes at the technology level, and sometimes at the application and business level to create solutions. These are exciting times.
How do you address concerns that quantum computing will become as formidable as AI and impact us?
That’s a good point. It often makes me think of Isaac Asimov who, when writing about robots, acknowledged that new knowledge has its dangers but asked if the solution is to retreat from knowledge, or make it possible to use the knowledge to advance what we’re doing to take its benefits and mitigate its downsides. That was such a smart way of interpreting it. I mean, it’s all on all of us to use what we’re learning about these new technologies, and with quantum computing, to bring the positives of disruption and figure out how to exclude the negatives. A great example of that is these hybrid solvers that leverage the best of what classical computing and quantum computing can offer.
