D-Wave Quantum Inc., a leading quantum computing company, has launched a new hybrid quantum solver capable of handling up to 2 million variables. The solver, announced at the Qubits 2024 conference, is designed to help customers tackle complex optimization problems in areas such as workforce, manufacturing, and logistics. The new technology, available through D-Wave’s Leap quantum cloud service, can handle nonlinear relationships, making it more effective than solvers limited to linear relationships. The company’s CEO, Dr. Alan Baratz, believes the new solver will accelerate customers’ adoption of quantum technology and improve their competitive edge.
D-Wave Quantum Inc. Unveils New Hybrid Quantum Solver
D-Wave Quantum Inc., a company specializing in quantum computing systems, software, and services, has announced the launch of a new hybrid quantum solver for nonlinear programs. This development aims to enable customers to tackle increasingly complex real-world problems. The new solver is accessible through D-Wave’s Leap™ quantum cloud service. The company anticipates that this new tool will allow customers to solve complex optimization problems on a larger scale, surpassing the capabilities of previously available technologies.
The new solver can handle up to two million variables and constraints, a tenfold increase in problem size capacity compared to other D-Wave solvers for certain applications, according to preliminary benchmarking studies. This development is part of D-Wave’s expanding set of commercial quantum optimization offerings, supporting the company’s growth strategy announced earlier this year. D-Wave’s solutions, which include hardware, software, and professional services, aim to significantly reduce time-to-solution for organizations seeking to optimize operational processes and performance.
Addressing Workforce, Manufacturing, and Logistics Challenges
The new solver is particularly adept at handling nonlinear relationships, where the effect of changes to variables on solution quality is complex. This gives it an advantage over solvers limited to linear relationships. The solver simplifies the translation of real-world problems into hybrid quantum problem-solving methods and is exceptionally flexible, supporting a wide range of problems more accurately to deliver better results.
The solver can be used to optimize workforce scheduling for improved employee experience, enhance production scheduling to improve customer satisfaction, and create efficient and more sustainable logistics routing. For example, commercial trucking fleets, promotional tour operators, and others seeking to minimize drive time, manage fuel consumption, and address carbon emissions can reduce costs and improve fleet utilization by optimizing routes. Preliminary internal D-Wave benchmarking studies suggest that the new hybrid quantum solver can find feasible routes for up to 10 times more cities than previous D-Wave solutions when used on a similar scenario — the Traveling Salesperson Problem, a classic example of a challenging combinatorial optimization problem.
Quantum Optimization: A Growing Demand
Hybrid solvers, which combine quantum and classical computing resources, have been shown to improve solutions to complex optimization problems by exploring vast solution spaces more adeptly and pinpointing answers that are more difficult to calculate than using classical computing methods alone. Over the past year, D-Wave has seen customer use of its hybrid solver portfolio nearly double, indicating a growing market demand for quantum optimization technology.
D-Wave’s CEO, Dr. Alan Baratz, expressed confidence that the new solver will simplify and accelerate customers’ journey to successful quantum technology adoption, helping them more quickly drive return-on-investment, and gain a competitive edge. He noted that many organizations are recognizing that their most complex computational problems go well beyond the capabilities of existing solutions, leading them to adopt hybrid quantum solutions to find better answers to transform operations faster and improve the bottom line.
D-Wave Quantum Inc.: A Brief Overview
D-Wave Quantum Inc. is a company specializing in the development and delivery of quantum computing systems, software, and services. It is the world’s first commercial supplier of quantum computers and the only company building both annealing quantum computers and gate-model quantum computers. The company’s mission is to unlock the power of quantum computing today to benefit business and society.
D-Wave’s technology has been used by some of the world’s most advanced organizations including Mastercard, Deloitte, Davidson Technologies, ArcelorMittal, Siemens Healthineers, Unisys, NEC Corporation, Pattison Food Group Ltd., DENSO, Lockheed Martin, Forschungszentrum Jülich, University of Southern California, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. The company’s quantum applications address problems as diverse as logistics, artificial intelligence, materials sciences, drug discovery, scheduling, cybersecurity, fault detection, and financial modeling.
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