“Quantum optimizer manufacturer D-Wave Systems has been gaining a lot of traction recently. They’ve sold systems to Lockheed Martin and Google, and started producing results showing that their system can solve problems that are getting closer to having real-life applications. All in all, they have come a long way since the first hype-filled announcement. Over time, my skepticism has waxed and waned. Although I didn’t really trust their demonstrations, D-Wave’s papers, which usually made more limited claims, seemed pretty solid. Now, there is a new data point to add to the list, with a paper claiming to show that the D-Wave machine cannot be doing classical simulated annealing.”
