World's most powerful 1200+ qubit quantum computer will soon be available in the cloud

Canadian company D-Wave has announced the completion of the calibration process for its new generation quantum computer with over 1200 qubits—Advantage 2. Test runs have shown a doubling of the coherence time of qubits, accelerating calculations and increasing the accuracy of the chosen error-reduction strategy. Soon, the prototype of the Advantage 2 computer will be available through the company's cloud service, making it the most powerful quantum platform in the world.

It is essential to note that claims about the power of any quantum platform should be approached with healthy skepticism. Firstly, there is no unified metric for comparing quantum platforms working on fundamentally different elemental bases, such as cold neutral atoms, superconducting qubits, photons, elementary particle spins, ion traps, and so on. Secondly, D-Wave's quantum platform is designed for solving optimization problems, making it non-universal.

The D-Wave quantum computer maintains the coherent state of qubits in a unique way—by transitioning them to an excited state and waiting for them to settle into the state with the minimum energy, providing an answer to the programmed task (algorithm). Hence, comparing D-Wave systems of different generations makes sense.

According to the company's statement, the Advantage 2 quantum computers significantly outperform the previous Advantage generation. For instance, they solve problems related to the study of complex magnets, such as spin glasses, 20 times faster. These are critical optimization problems challenging for classical computers. Additionally, the Advantage 2 system performs calculations twice as fast in material modeling and demonstrates significantly fewer errors. In the field of solving artificial intelligence problems, Advantage 2 outperforms its predecessor in 90% of cases, successfully addressing constraint satisfaction problems.

These improvements were made possible by the new topology of superconducting qubits, increasing the number of possible connections from 15 to 20. Substantial enhancement is also achieved by doubling the coherence time, expanding the platform scale, and reducing noise levels in new integrated circuits. The system with over 1200 qubits will be provided through the company's Leap cloud service.

For commercial deliveries, the company plans to assemble systems with 7000 qubits, expected to be available by the end of this year, although delays are possible. The Advantage 2 prototype with 500 qubits was ready a year and a half ago. Since then, the company has only managed to create a prototype with over 1200 qubits, indicating a significant lag from the previously announced schedule.