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Criticism

D-Wave has been heavily criticized by some scientists in the quantum computing field. According to Scott Aaronson, a Computer Science professor at MIT who specializes in the theory of quantum computing, D-Wave's demonstration did not prove anything about the workings of the computer. He claimed a useful quantum computer would require a huge breakthrough in physics, which has not been published or shared with the physics community.[21] Dr. Aaronson has maintained or updated his criticisms on his blog.[22] See [23] for a reaction to Scott Aaronson's criticisms by Dr. David Bacon, a professor at the University of Washington.
Umesh Vazirani, a professor at UC Berkeley and one of the founders of quantum complexity theory, made the following criticism:[24]
"Their claimed speedup over classical algorithms appears to be based on a misunderstanding of a paper my colleagues van Dam, Mosca and I wrote on "The power of adiabatic quantum computing." That speed up unfortunately does not hold in the setting at hand, and therefore D-Wave's "quantum computer" even if it turns out to be a true quantum computer, and even if it can be scaled to thousands of qubits, would likely not be more powerful than a cell phone."
Wim van Dam, a professor at UC Santa Barbara, summarized the current scientific community consensus in the journal Nature:[25]
"At the moment it is impossible to say if D-Wave's quantum computer is intrinsically equivalent to a classical computer or not. So until more is known about their error rates, caveat emptor is the least one can say."