Doubts Emerge Over D-Wave's Quantum Supremacy Claims
Quantum computing is one of the most exciting frontiers in technology, but a new controversy has emerged surrounding D-Wave’s bold claims of quantum supremacy. The company had asserted that its quantum computers could solve problems far beyond the reach of classical machines, but recent findings suggest otherwise.
D-Wave published a pre-print last year, arguing that its Advantage quantum computers could tackle complex problems involving the transverse field Ising model—a mathematical framework describing how matter changes states. According to D-Wave, such problems would be practically unsolvable for classical computers. However, new research challenges that assertion.
Two independent teams have demonstrated that these problems can be solved using conventional computational techniques. Dries Sels and his team at New York University achieved similar results on a regular laptop in just two hours, utilizing tensor networks to streamline calculations. Essentially, these networks reduce the required computational power, making previously daunting problems more accessible to classical machines.
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D-Wave, however, remains unconvinced. Andrew King from the company responded by highlighting that Sels’ team did not cover all variables, sizes, or simulations as D-Wave did. In defense of their claim, D-Wave conducted additional tests involving up to 3,200 qubits—far surpassing the 54 qubits used in Sels’ simulations. While these new results have yet to be published, D-Wave insists that they reinforce its claims of quantum supremacy.
But the skepticism doesn’t stop there. A separate study by Linda Mauron and Giuseppe Carleo from EPFL in Switzerland suggests that the problems D-Wave solved do not necessarily require quantum entanglement—one of the key advantages of quantum computing. In their experiment, they managed to simulate the same problems using only minimal entanglement, running their tests on standard GPUs. According to Carleo, their approach accomplished in three days what D-Wave claimed would take 200 years on a classical supercomputer.
This is not the first time quantum supremacy claims have been contested. In 2019, Google declared that its Sycamore quantum processor could perform calculations in minutes that would take classical supercomputers 10,000 years. However, later studies used classical simulations to complete the task in just 14.22 seconds, raising questions about the true gap between quantum and classical computing power.
D-Wave, one of the pioneers in commercial quantum computing, has long faced scrutiny over whether its devices are truly quantum or simply highly optimized classical machines. While their quantum nature is now largely accepted, the debate over their practical advantages continues. Aleks Kissinger from the University of Oxford points out that while D-Wave has gained more credibility over the years, the company must be cautious with sweeping claims of quantum superiority.
So, what’s the takeaway here? The field of quantum computing is rapidly evolving, and while breakthroughs are happening, classical computing continues to find ways to keep up. As history shows, every time a quantum machine is claimed to be “beyond classical reach,” someone finds a way to simulate it using classical methods. Perhaps the real lesson for quantum researchers is to be more measured in their claims—because as we’ve seen, classical computing isn’t backing down just yet.
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