D-Wave’s new 1,000-qubit processor, a step up from its last model with 512-qubits.

Burnaby’s quantum computing company has announced a new computer chip double the size of its previous generation – allowing for more complex computational problems possible than any computer.

D-Wave Systems has developed a 1,000-qubit processor that it claims has the search space containing more possibilities than there are particles in the observable universe.

Goldman Sachs, NASA, and Google have partnered up with or invested in D-Wave – other investors include In-Q-Tel, representing the CIA, and Lockheed Martin, a weapon developer for the U.S.

The new processor is an upgrade from the previous 512-qubit processor, which works at finding optimal solutions to complicated problems using a quantum annealing algorithm.

D-Wave is the only commercial company producing computers using quantum physics as and has more than 150 issued patents worldwide.

The optimization problems the computers try to solve can be used for machine learning, cancer detection and image-labelling.

“Temperature, noise and precision all play a profound role in how well quantum processors solve problems,” said Jeremy Hilton, D-Wave vice-president of processor development, in a statement. “Beyond scaling up the technology by doubling the number of qubits, we also achieved key technology advances prioritized around their impact on performance.”

Hilton said benchmarking data demonstrating the new performance levels will be released later this year.

The company was founded in 1999 by University of B.C. scientists, and the last generation of computers require a temperature colder than deep space to work.

http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/2015/06/23/burnaby-quantum-computing-firm-announces-new-chip