D-Wave Quantum jumps as its breakthrough computing system hits the market
D-Wave’s Advantage2 system, used to produce its “quantum supremacy” scientific breakthrough, is now available as a service and for sale.
Shares of D-Wave Quantum are soaring premarket after announcing that its Advantage2 quantum computing system is ready for prime time.
The new model can now be accessed by customers as part of D-Wave’s “quantum computing as a service” business as well as for on-site installation.
What’s special about this quantum computer? Well, for starters, D-Wave used the prototype of this system to produce its “quantum supremacy” result, in which it solved a practical business problem — determining what types of magnetic materials could make good sensors and how to make them the most sensitive sensors they can be — that would be energy- and time-prohibitive for a classical supercomputer to do.
Given that sensors are used in medical imaging, electrical networks, motors, and more, this wasn’t the case of solving a ridiculously complicated math equation that has little applicability to any real-world value, but something with potential commercial implications.
D-Wave’s revenue profile has been quite lumpy because system sales bring in so much more than its professional services or QCaaS business lines based on the current volume of customers and their computing needs. Its Q1 revenues spiked thanks to the sale of a system to a German supercomputing center. Because there are only so many supercomputing centers, hyperscalers offer a potential new avenue to really move the needle on overall sales. D-Wave CEO Dr. Alan Baratz is eager for his firm’s quantum systems to be used to add speed and efficiency to an AI boom that has hundreds of billions in capex behind it.
“We’re doing some very interesting work in how you can use the quantum computer together with classical to do AI model training and inference faster and with less electricity consumption,” he said in an interview with Sherwood News earlier this month. “Those are system sales opportunities.”
GO DEEPER: D-Wave CEO says recent tech breakthrough is bolstering its sales momentum.
As to how this compares to D-Wave’s prior system:
“It’s always about increasing all three: qubits and connectivity, coherence time, and energy scale,” Baratz told us in late March. “In going from Advantage to Advantage2, we went from degree 15 on connectivity to degree 20, we went to double the coherence time, and we went to 40% greater energy scale, so we improved on all three of those.”
READ MORE: D-Wave CEO explains how the US is falling behind the rest of the world on quantum computing.
