PALO ALTO, Calif. & BURNABY, B.C. — June 16, 2022 — Quantum computing company D-Wave Systems today announced it is showcasing an experimental prototype of the next-generation Advantage2 annealing quantum computer in the Leap quantum cloud service. The quantum prototype is available for use today.
D-Wave said the prototype has 500+ qubits, woven together in the new Zephyr topology with 20-way inter-qubit connectivity and enabled by a new qubit design. “The Advantage2 prototype represents a version of the upcoming full-scale product with all core functionality available for testing. In early benchmarks, the reduced scale system demonstrates more compact embeddings; an increased energy scale, lowering error rates; and improved solution quality and increased probability of finding optimal solutions,” the company said. By making the prototype available now, the company said it is providing an early trial snapshot for developers and researchers.
Announced six months ago as part of D-Wave’s Clarity roadmap, and available in 2023-2024, the Advantage2 system will be the company’s sixth-generation quantum system. It will feature 7,000 qubits with a new qubit design, enabling 20-way connectivity between qubits in a new topology. Its low-noise multi-layer superconducting integrated-circuit fabrication process is designed to provide greater qubit coherence for increased performance. The company said early testing on quantum processing unit (QPU) chips fabricated with the low-noise process highlights a significant reduction in qubit noise.
“We’ve been building annealing quantum computers for more than 15 years. In those years, we’ve been able to create a scalable manufacturing and product development cycle. With Advantage2, those learnings have accelerated our ability to bring innovations in fabrication processes and materials, and hardware and software more quickly into our development cycle,” said Emile Hoskinson, director, Quantum Annealing Products, D-Wave. “The Advantage2 prototype is designed to share what we’re learning and gain feedback from the community as we continue to build towards the full Advantage2 system. Our current Advantage quantum computer was completely re-engineered from the ground up. With Advantage2, we’re pushing that envelope again – demonstrating that connectivity and reduction in noise will be a delivery vehicle for even greater performance once the full system is available. The Advantage2 prototype is an opportunity for us to share our excitement and give a sneak peek into the future for customers bringing quantum into their applications.”
Developers can sign up for the Leap quantum cloud service and get one minute of free access to all of Leap. Developers who open source their code receive an additional minute of free solver access per month in subsequent months. Customers who have Leap subscriptions get the full value of the Leap quantum cloud service, including access to the new Advantage2 prototype.
D-Wave said the Leap quantum cloud service includes the 5000+ qubit, 15-way connectivity Advantage performance update, released in October 2021. Leap also includes quantum hybrid solvers, like the new Constrained Quadratic Model (CQM) solver, which can run constrained quadratic optimization problems with integer and continuous variables. The cloud service also incorporates an updated integrated developer environment (IDE), integration into the Python based Ocean open-source developer tools, demos, sample code and examples, and a community of quantum developers, designed to run in-production quantum hybrid applications.
D-Wave said enterprises can sign up for the D-Wave Launch program, intended to translate businesses’ problems into hybrid quantum applications.
