Tag Archives: Greg Tallant

Lockheed Martin upgrades to 1000+ Qubit D-Wave system

D-Wave Systems, a Canadian quantum computing company, seems to be making new business announcements on a weekly basis. After last week’s US Los Alamos National Laboratory announcement (Nov. 12, 2015 posting) , there’s a Nov. 16, 2015 news item on Nanotechnology Now,

Harris & Harris Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:TINY), an investor in transformative companies enabled by disruptive science, notes that its portfolio company, D-Wave Systems, Inc., announced that it has entered into a multi-year agreement with Lockheed Martin to upgrade the company’s 512-qubit D-Wave Two™ quantum computer to the new D-Wave 2X™ system with 1,000+ qubits.

A Nov. 16, 2015 D-Wave Systems news release provides more details about the deal,

D-Wave Systems Inc., the world’s first quantum computing company, today announced that it has entered into a multi-year agreement with Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) to upgrade the company’s 512-qubit D-Wave Two™ quantum computer to the new D-Wave 2X™ system with 1,000+ qubits. This represents the second system upgrade since Lockheed Martin became D-Wave’s first customer in 2011 with the purchase of a 128 qubit D-Wave One™ system. The agreement includes the system, maintenance and associated professional services.

“Our mission is to solve complex challenges, advance scientific discovery and deliver innovative solutions to our customers, which requires expertise in the most advanced technologies,” said Greg Tallant, Lockheed Martin fellow and lead for the University of Southern California-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computation Center (QCC). “Through our continued investment in D-Wave technology, we are able to push the boundaries of quantum computing and apply the latest technologies to address the real-world problems being faced by our customers.”

For quantum computing, the performance gain over traditional computing is most evident in exceedingly complex computational problems. This could be in areas such as validating the performance of software or vehicle planning and scheduling. With the new D-Wave system, Lockheed Martin researchers will be able to explore solutions for significantly larger computational problems with improved accuracy and execution time.

The new system will be hosted at the University of Southern California-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computation Center, which first began exploring the power of quantum computing with the D-Wave One, the world’s first quantum computer.

The installation of the D-Wave 2X system will be completed in January 2016.

Who knows what next week will bring for D-Wave, which by the way is located in Vancouver, Canada or, more accurately, Burnaby?