512 qubit D-WAVE 2

[zif33rs]

Nasa purchased a 512 qubit D-Wave 2 quantum computer for $15 million.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22554494

"D-Wave Systems has been focused on building machines that exploit a technique called quantum annealing - a way of distilling the optimal mathematical solutions from all the possibilities."


Apparently they work and are here to stay. I think inside 15 years this could be a real issue to sha-256 encryption. I have done some research into this and while at this time I dont feel this poises a threat, in the near future with optimizations and advances I think it very well could. I am pretty confident that Moore's Law will hold true with these quantum machines as it has with x86.


Anyone care to enlighten me further?

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[gadman2]

Wait until they make quantum ASICS, in the next 20 years. Assuming bitcoin is still around, a single quantum ASIC would be able to out hash the, as of now, entire global network hashrate. And probably by a factor of more than 100.

[zif33rs]

I think by definition a quantum computer is sort of an asic already.

[AzureEngineer]

It is not a "real" quantum computer. It uses "sort of like but not quite quantum computing" and must be, like an ASIC, designed with a very specialized purpose in mind.