UNBOXING A QUANTUM COMPUTER! – Holy $H!T Ep 19
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,736 words · ~8 min read
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We are coming to you live from the coldest place in the known universe!
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Well, near it anyway.
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What would you say if I told you that the headquarters for D-Wave,
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the world leader in commercial quantum computing systems,
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is a stone's throw from our warehouse?
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And what would you say if I told you that they invited us in for a behind-the-scenes tour?
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Well, Linus, I'd probably say that's exactly what I was expecting,
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given the title and thumbnail of this video.
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Stop wasting my time!
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Got it! Let's go!
0:41
Cooler Master's 25th anniversary edition, Cosmos II,
0:45
features a unique dual curved tempered glass side panel.
0:50
Check it out now at the link below.
0:53
So, in 2007, D-Wave introduced their first quantum processor.
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Now, with only 16 qubits, it wasn't especially powerful,
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but the point wasn't whether you could or couldn't solve the same problems
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with a 5-inch processor.
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You could use a pencil and a piece of paper.
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The point was that this scalable approach
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would allow them to ship the world's first commercial quantum computer,
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the D-Wave I, in 2011 with 128 qubits,
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followed by 512, 1000, and 2000 qubit designs
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in 2013, 2015, and 2017, respectively.
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And adding more qubits is the key to increasing performance,
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because the more qubits you add,
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the more complex the problems that you can tackle.
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You see, quantum computing doesn't work like classical computing
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with ones and zeros where you feed it a question
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and then it spits out an answer.
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Instead, a quantum processor takes all of the parameters you feed it
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and works on every solution,
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pointing you at one or two or maybe even more optimal solutions.
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So they're not perfect for everything.
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I don't think there's a single person in this building
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who expects Call of Duty Black Ops 10
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to run on a D-Wave Mach 5 quantum gaming rig or anything like that.
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But for scheduling out a sports team's games over the course of a season,
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for tackling problems like logistics, climate change, and energy distribution,
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or for conducting AI research,
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these puppies right here
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have the potential to completely disrupt the existing players.
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So then let's go have a look at one, shall we?
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Now, there are only a handful of customers in the world
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who have actually ponied up the price of a D-Wave system,
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including high rollers like Lockheed Martin,
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Los Alamos National Lab, Google, and NASA.
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But D-Wave themselves have a handful
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of their latest generation 2000 Q7
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systems running here at their headquarters
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that are available through the cloud.
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Just make sure that you don't turn off any of the ones
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with a delightfully low-tech online sign zip-tied to it.
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It might be doing very, very important research.
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So from the outside, a 2000 Q doesn't look that different
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from any other compute cluster with a few black racks.
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And when you open up door number one,
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there's not much at first glance
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to indicate that there's anything special
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about it.
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You'll find a network switch, a UPS for battery backup,
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a normal server responsible for monitoring,
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some monitoring devices that...
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Wait a minute.
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Seven, eight degrees milli-Kelvin?
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We're gonna have to get back to that later.
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There's also a second server that takes a problem
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and translates it into machine code
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using custom room-temperature electricity
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electronics to generate high-precision analog signals
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that it then sends to, as we promised,
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just about the coldest place in the known universe,
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the single, yes, just one chip,
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single codename Washington quantum processor
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at the heart of this machine.
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But where exactly is it?
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It's not behind door two or door number three.
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Back there, you'll find the first
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and second stage pumps that are used
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to create a vacuum around the processor
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to thermally insulate it
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and its cooling system from the outside world,
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as well as a compressor
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for the aforementioned cooling system.
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And you also won't find it in this barrel-shaped doodad.
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That is actually a liquid nitrogen filter
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that removes impurities from the coolant mixture
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of helium-3 and helium-4 isotopes
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and is one of the things
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that allows D-Wave systems to run
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for years at a time,
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a critical feature given that the chip
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kind of locks into a certain configuration
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once it's super cooled.
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And if you heat one of these puppies up
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back to room temperature,
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it can take up to two days
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to cool it back down
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and up to four weeks
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to finish the rebalancing
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or recalibration process.
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No, no, to find the actual processor,
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we have to go past
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this first door on the left here
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that handles connecting the
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all-business racks at the front
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to the giant box here
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that was hiding in plain sight
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that I'll be referring to as the
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party in the back
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or, per D-Wave's gentle suggestion,
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the shielded enclosure.
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This right here is effectively
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a big Faraday cage
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and the first of 16 layers
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of shielding that are designed
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to shield the power lines
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and preserve the integrity
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of the signals to and from
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the quantum processor
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to the greatest degree possible.
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And that was a very intentional pun,
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by the way.
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Now, normally, these rooms are closed
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and there is a series of casings
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on top of this apparatus here
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to maintain the vacuum around
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what is effectively
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the motherboard of our quantum computer.
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But they had one open for maintenance today,
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so we got to get up close and personal.
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The thing is peppered
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with probes and sensors,
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heat exchangers, data wires,
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but the five big plates
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are really the main attraction here.
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Each of them represents a different stage
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of the cooling system.
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The top one gets signals
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from the outside world
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on copper wires
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and runs at a frosty 70 degrees Kelvin.
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The next one down uses the same fridge
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and these braided copper conductors
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to get down to four degrees Kelvin,
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which is both low enough
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to condense helium to a liquid
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and to switch over from copper wires
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to the superconductor niobium.
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The middle plate here uses vacuumed helium-4
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to drop our signal wires
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to one degree Kelvin.
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The fourth uses helium-3
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to get us to about a tenth of that.
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And the final stage uses a sophisticated mixture
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of those two isotopes
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to drive this entire filtering
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and shielding apparatus
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as well as the processor inside
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down to its typical operating temperature
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of about 0.015 degrees Kelvin,
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damn near absolute zero.
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But why does it need to be so cold?
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Niobium already superconducts at nine degrees Kelvin.
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Interstellar space is 3.1 degrees Kelvin.
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Our solar system is even warmer.
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We're talking 0.015 degrees Kelvin.
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Well, this superconducting chip here
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is what's inside there,
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and it's connected via 400 superconducting wires.
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And this is kind of like the pins
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on a CPU socket.
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And what it's doing
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is it's using quantum mechanical effects
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to process information.
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So for that to work,
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these effects need to be significant enough
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to use them for computation,
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which means that the temperature
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needs to be well below
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the energy scale of those quantum effects.
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If it wasn't,
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then the data you'd get
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would be very, very noisy,
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corrupted by heat-related quantum effects.
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That's why the colder they can get,
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pretty much the better.
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And getting even colder in the future
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may actually be practical.
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So this generation of D-Waves processors
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consumes no power
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and outputs no heat,
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meaning that the 20 kilowatts of power
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that are required to run the system
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is just dedicated to the cooling system.
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So unless they wanted to go colder,
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this energy cost doesn't change
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whether you're running 100 qubits
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or 2,000 qubits.
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That's just the sweet spot
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of practicality and functionality today.
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And more cooling is far from the only thing
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on the horizon.
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The future's looking bright
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for our neighbors here at D-Wave.
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They don't have a 50-year vision yet necessarily,
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but in the nearer term,
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they don't really perceive anyone else in the space
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as a real competitor
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with a commercializable technology.
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And with more R&D focus,
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they think their system could be as compact
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as three or four racks
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and capable of taking on
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some of the hardest neural network problems
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that we face in the years to come.
10:23
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So thanks to D-Wave for hosting us here.
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Thanks to you guys for watching.
11:36
If you disliked this video,
11:37
you know where that button is.
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But if you liked it,
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hit the like button,
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get subscribed,
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