Quantum or Not: New Supercomputer Is Certainly Something Else

"It's exactly the sort of futuristic thinking you'd expect from Google and NASA: Late last week, the organizations announced a partnership to build a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at NASA's Ames Research Center."

"But questions surround the new type of computer at the lab's core. D-Wave systems, the company that makes the machine, says it is a quantum computer — a machine that runs on the strange laws of quantum mechanics. But although the computer can solve a certain type of problem much faster than conventional computers, critics say that the company's claims are not supported by scientific evidence."

"'It's not exactly science, what they're doing,' says Christopher Monroe, a physicist with the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland. 'It's high-level engineering, and I think it's high-level salesmanship, too.'"