In the volatile realm of quantum computing, D-Wave is on a volatile, upward-pointing run of its own, one that points up the high hopes for the potential of quantum computing.
As recently as six months ago, the quantum startup’s share price remained stubborngly under $2 for most of the time span starting in late 2022. But today, after the company announced general availability of its Advantage2 annealing quantum system, D-Wave shares as of this writing jumped more than 30 percent to $17.24.
The Advantage2 created a stir last February when the Palo Alto-based company announced that the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) at Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ) in Germany announced it was purchasing the system. According to FZJ, it will be connected to the center’s forthcoming JUPITER system, slated to be Europe’s first exascale supercomputer.
Then in March, D-Wave published an article in the journal Science reporting that Advantage outperformed Frontier, the first certified exascale-class supercomputer, in solving magnetic materials simulation problems. The paper, “Beyond-Classical Computation in Quantum Simulation,” “validates this achievement as the world’s first and only demonstration of quantum computational supremacy on a useful problem,” D-Wave said.
To be sure, not all quantum observers agreed with D-Wave’s quantum advantage assertions, but the announcement drew considerable comment in the advanced computing world.
And now, with today’s announcement, D-Wave re-stated that the Advantage2 system is “beyond the reach of classical computers,” referring to the March findings reported in Science. “….the Advantage2 system is commercial-grade, and built to address real-world use cases in areas such as optimization, materials simulation and artificial intelligence (AI),” D-Wave said.
D-Wave one-year stock performance
“Today marks a significant milestone not just for D-Wave, but for the quantum computing industry as a whole, as we bring to market our sixth-generation quantum computer, a system so powerful that it can solve hard problems outside the reach of one of the world’s largest exascale GPU-based classical supercomputers,” said Dr. Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave. “It’s an engineering marvel, with substantial technical advancements that highlight D-Wave’s progress in scaling quantum technology to meet industry demands for growing computational processing power while maintaining energy efficiency. We’re helping customers realize value from quantum computing right now, and the Advantage2 system represents a remarkable achievement in delivering on that mission.”
The system can be accessed via D-Wave’s Leap real-time quantum cloud service, available in more than 40 countries and offers 99.9 percent availability and uptime, sub-second response times and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, according to the company, which also said the system is available for on-premises ownership.
According to D-Wave, Advantage offers:
- Qubit connectivity: The Advantage2 processor includes the Zephyr topology with 20-way connectivity, which enables embedding of more complex problems.
- Higher energy scale and lower noise: The Advantage2 system offers a 40 percent increase in energy scale and a 75 percent reduction in noise, which contributes to higher-quality solutions for complex calculations.
- Coherence:A twofold increase in coherence allows the Advantage2 quantum processor to achieve faster time-to-solution.
- Energy-efficient processing power: D-Wave’s quantum computers, including the Advantage2 system, have required the same amount of electricity over six generations — 12.5 kilowatts.
- Fast anneal: This feature enables coherent quantum annealing at scale, greatly reducing the impact of external disturbances such as thermal fluctuations that can hinder quantum calculations.
- Hybrid solver integration: Now integrated with the Advantage2 system, the hybrid solvers in the Leap quantum cloud service—including the powerful nonlinear hybrid solver—support up to 2 million variables and constraints, allowing businesses to run large-scale, business-critical applications in production.
“I lead a significant R&D effort at LANL to explore the use of analog quantum computers for scientific discovery in condensed matter theory and magnetic materials,” said Carleton Coffrin, senior scientist, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). “We currently use the Advantage2 prototype system, which has yielded a variety of interesting technical results that are currently being prepared for peer review. The team is eager to work on the full-scale Advantage2 system to further this research.”
