In 2007, D-Wave announced with great fanfare that it had developed the world's first commercial quantum computer. Unfortunately, details were rather scarce, and it was hard to confirm that anything quantum was going on in the company's device. In the intervening time, D-Wave has backed away from its initial claims somewhat, now calling its device a quantum optimizer, and claiming that, while its device doesn't meet all the criteria to be called a quantum computer, it still offers benefits over a classical computer.
In a recent publication, researchers from D-Wave and Harvard University teamed up to use D-Wave's quantum optimizer to solve a protein folding problem. That demonstration, combined with a simulation of the device's performance, goes a long way to convincing me that D-Wave's optimizer may indeed be a quantum optimizer after all.
Folding proteins
The protein folding problem is a very difficult and very important one. Proteins are strings of amino acids, which, as they are joined up, can flop around and fold up in a huge number of ways. But—and this is the kicker—the final folded shape of the protein is what allows it to perform its function. Proteins that end up folded the wrong way don't work as well as a correctly folded protein or don't work at all, and they can even be harmful. At first glance it seems highly improbable that a protein with a virtually infinite number of potential configurations should, with near-certainty, fold itself correctly every time.Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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