D-Wave Announces 1,200+ Qubit Advantage2™ Prototype in New, Lower-Noise Fabrication Stack, Demonstrating 20x Faster Time-to-Solution on Important Class of Hard Optimization Problems
New prototype will soon be accessible to customers in the Leap™ real-time quantum cloud service
Shows more than 40% increase in energy scale to deliver higher-quality solutions and 20-way qubit connectivity capable of tackling larger problems than the previous AdvantageTM system
PALO ALTO, Calif., BURNABY, B.C., --- January 23, 2024 -- D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS) (“D-Wave”), a leader in quantum computing systems, software, and services and the world’s first commercial supplier of quantum computers, today announced it has calibrated a 1,200+ qubit Advantage2 prototype, which will soon be available in the company’s Leap real-time quantum cloud service. Developed with a new lower-noise, multilayer superconducting integrated-circuit fabrication stack, the new Advantage2 prototype demonstrates significant performance gains on hard optimization problems and is expected to be particularly powerful for new use cases such as machine learning.
The new Advantage2 prototype features 1,200+ qubits and 10,000+ couplers, double the number of qubits and couplers over the previously released Advantage2 prototype. Benchmarks demonstrate substantial advancements across a number of performance metrics compared to the Advantage quantum processing unit (QPU), including:
- Qubit connectivity: increased from 15 to 20-way connectivity to enable solutions to larger problems
- Energy scale: increased by more than 40% to deliver higher-quality solutions
- Qubit coherence time: doubled, which will drive faster time-to-solution
The new Advantage2 prototype is 20 times faster at solving spin glasses, an important family of classically hard optimization problems. Recent research has shown that compared to the Advantage system, the Advantage2 prototype grows quantum correlations twice as fast in materials simulation and shows significantly reduced errors in quantum simulation tasks. Further, it shows improved performance on constraint satisfaction problems, with the Advantage2 prototype beating the Advantage system 90% of the time.
“The new Advantage2 prototype represents a giant step up in performance,” said Mark W. Johnson, senior vice president of quantum technologies and systems products at D-Wave. “With the new lower-noise fabrication stack, we’re seeing significant gains in coherence, connectivity, and energy scale, which will translate to higher-quality and faster solutions. This 1,200+ qubit prototype gives us great confidence that the full Advantage2 system will be our most performant system yet and unlock substantial computational power and problem-solving capabilities for our customers.”
In November 2023, D-Wave announced important research results that demonstrate successful Quantum Error Mitigation (QEM) in the Advantage2 prototype. The techniques reduce errors in quantum simulations, producing results consistent with the quantum system maintaining its quantum state (“coherence”) for an order of magnitude longer time than an unmitigated system. These techniques are expected to drive performance advancements in the forthcoming Advantage2 system and future processors.
The full Advantage2 system will mark the company’s sixth-generation quantum system. It is expected to feature 7,000 qubits with a new qubit design, enabling 20-way connectivity between qubits in a new topology.
About D-Wave Quantum Inc.
D-Wave is a leader in the development and delivery of quantum computing systems, software, and services, and is the world’s first commercial supplier of quantum computers—and the only company building both annealing quantum computers and gate-model quantum computers. Our mission is to unlock the power of quantum computing today to benefit business and society. We do this by delivering customer value with practical quantum applications for problems as diverse as logistics, artificial intelligence, materials sciences, drug discovery, scheduling, cybersecurity, fault detection, and financial modeling. 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.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking, as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from the information expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements and may not be indicative of future results. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the availability of the Advantage2 prototype in D-Wave’s Leap cloud service, and the expected performance, features, and availability of the Advantage2 system. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including, among others, various factors beyond management’s control, including unexpected challenges in the development or functionality of the Advantage2 system and in making the Advantage2 prototype available in the Leap cloud service; general economic conditions and other risks; our ability to expand our customer base and the customer adoption of our solutions; risks within D-Wave’s industry, including anticipated trends, growth rates, and challenges for companies engaged in the business of quantum computing and the markets in which they operate; the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against us; risks related to the performance of our business and the timing of expected business or financial milestones; unanticipated technological or project development challenges, including with respect to the cost and/or timing thereof; the performance of our products; the effects of competition on our business; the risk that we will need to raise additional capital to execute our business plan, which may not be available on acceptable terms or at all; the risk that we may never achieve or sustain profitability; the risk that we are unable to secure or protect our intellectual property; volatility in the price of our securities; the risk that our securities will not maintain the listing on the NYSE; and the numerous other factors set forth in D-Wave’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for its fiscal year ended December 31, 2022 and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements in this press release in making an investment decision, which are based on information available to us on the date hereof. We undertake no duty to update this information unless required by law.
Media Contact:
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