NEWPORT, R.I., Sept. 24, 2019 -- D-Wave Systems Inc., the leader in quantum computing systems, software, and services, today announced that its next-generation quantum system will be named Advantage™. Advantage will be available in the Leap™ quantum cloud service in mid-2020. Designed to speed the development of commercial quantum applications, the Advantage quantum system will power a new hardware and software platform that will accelerate and ease the delivery of quantum computing applications. Reflecting years of customer feedback, the platform captures users’ priorities and business requirements and will deliver significant performance gains and greater solution precision. Since announcing the roadmap for the Advantage quantum system in February 2019, D-Wave has rolled out hardware and software innovations, including access through Leap to a lower-noise D-Wave 2000Q™ processor and the Hybrid™ open-source workflow platform.
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a long-time customer of D-Wave’s, today also announced that they have signed a contract to upgrade to the Advantage quantum system on-premise when it is available. LANL is a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science to address national security priorities. To-date, LANL and its collaborators have built over 60 early quantum applications and conducted essential research in a diverse range of domains. The Advantage quantum system will help fuel this work by providing access to a processor with the new, highly connected Pegasus topology, lower noise, and increased qubit count, which will benefit from the expanded hybrid software and tools available in Leap’s Ocean SDK™.
“This is the third time we will have upgraded our D-Wave system. Each upgrade has enabled new research into developing quantum algorithms and new tools in support of Los Alamos’ national security mission,” said Irene Qualters, associate laboratory director for simulation and computation at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “Quantum computing is a critical area of research for Los Alamos, and our researchers are excited about getting access to D-Wave’s Advantage quantum system.”
To further demonstrate the benefits of the new lower-noise design in the Advantage quantum system, D-Wave has published two white papers describing clear improvements in performance of the lower-noise 2000Q processor, compared to the previous 2000Q system. The lower-noise processor, which was made available to customers via Leap in May, shows improved precision and better tunneling, which produces better-quality solutions and can lead to significant speedups on problems of interest to quantum application developers.
Customers like CogniFrame, a financial services company that develops hybrid optimization solutions to help banks improve their return on assets, see the early benefits of the technology innovations in the Advantage quantum system:
“CogniFrame’s financial services operating system built on top of D-Wave’s quantum systems helps solve "intractable" and computationally intensive non-convex and stochastic optimization problems for financial institutions, thus improving their return on assets. Our hybrid optimization solution helps banks arrive at the optimal composition of capital and assets while reducing costs, enhancing returns, and maintaining an appropriate risk level. We work closely with D-Wave to more quickly build and run optimization algorithms across hybrid classical and quantum systems,” said Vish R, CogniFrame chief executive officer and founder. “Just like D-Wave, our objective is driving value for our customers. Multiple financial use cases have been identified, including asset-liability management, collateral optimization, and portfolio optimization for different regulatory requirements. D-Wave is helping us make that a reality.”
“Quantum computing is only as valuable as the applications customers can run,” said Alan Baratz, chief product officer, D-Wave. “With the Advantage quantum system, we are building the first ever quantum computer designed to deliver business benefit. Our investments across our quantum platform, which includes the Leap quantum cloud service, the Advantage quantum system, and the Ocean developer tools, will together allow customers to solve even more complex problems at greater scale and bring emerging quantum and hybrid applications to life. Our ongoing efforts to further productize and commercialize our quantum platform are good for the growing ecosystem, good for the quantum computing market, and most importantly, good for our customers, who are building the first commercial quantum applications.”
These announcements come during D-Wave’s semi-annual users’ conference, Qubits, hosted this week in Newport, RI. The gathering brings quantum pioneers, early enterprise adopters, and developers together to discuss new early applications, built using D-Wave’s quantum systems. Participants represent industries spanning transportation, healthcare, manufacturing, finance, telecommunications, and more. Attendees from around the world – private and public companies, government organizations, leading universities in the U.S. and Japan, and research firms – include GE Research, Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, SAIC, Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd., and many more.
Over two dozen speakers from the user community are on the agenda, presenting their work on quantum applications and tools.
Selected talks at the conference:
- Implementing Quantum Applications in Financial Institutions
- Practical Usage of Quantum Annealing in Industrial Applications
- Computing Protein Binding using Quantum Annealing
- Delivering Value with Quantum Computing: Kidney Exchange Network
The new applications add to the more than 150 existing early customer-developed applications in areas as diverse as financial modeling, airline scheduling, election modeling, quantum chemistry simulation, automotive design, preventative healthcare, logistics, and more. Many users have also developed software tools that simplify application development. These existing applications and tools, and the vibrant user community, give developers a wealth of examples to learn from and build upon. The delivery of the Advantage quantum system will expand the variety, performance, precision, and breadth of quantum applications.
About D-Wave Systems Inc.
D-Wave is the leader in the development and delivery of quantum computing systems, software, and services and is the world's first commercial supplier of quantum computers. Our mission is to unlock the power of quantum computing for the world. We believe that quantum computing will enable solutions to the most challenging national defense, scientific, technical, and commercial problems. D-Wave's systems are being used by some of the world's most advanced organizations, including Lockheed Martin, Volkswagen, DENSO, USRA, USC, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. With headquarters near Vancouver, Canada, D-Wave's US operations are based in Palo Alto, CA and Bellevue, WA. D-Wave has a blue-chip investor base including PSP Investments, Goldman Sachs, BDC Capital, DFJ, In-Q-Tel, PenderFund Capital, 180 Degree Capital Corp., and Kensington Capital Partners Limited. For more information, visit: www.dwavesys.com.