Quantum Computing Inc says Dirac-3S scales to nearly 10,000 variables

[Rogue Sam]

Quantum Computing Inc, often known as QCi, has announced Dirac-3S, the next version of its quantum optimisation system. The company says it scales to nearly 10,000 variables, with 9,980 demonstrated in tests, which is about ten times the roughly 1,000 variables of its current system. It is aimed at commercial customers rather than research labs. First customer shipments are expected in November. That is a quick timeline for new hardware

QCi's approach is different from most of the companies we have covered. It uses photonics and standard semiconductor manufacturing, and the system runs at room temperature with low power requirements. It is built around a modular 5U base unit with modules that can be added to handle more complex problems. The company says it can tackle continuous, integer and higher order optimisation problems. Low power is a real selling point when data centre energy use is such a big issue

Chief technology officer Yong Meng Sua said Dirac-3S takes the platform from demonstrating what is possible to delivering a system built for practical commercial use. Professor Paul Griffin of Singapore Management University said the extra capacity makes significantly larger and more complex optimisation challenges feasible. Optimisation matters for logistics, finance, scheduling and manufacturing, so there is a real market. Even modest gains in those areas are worth a lot of money

This is a press release, and it comes with plenty of standard caveats. QCi notes that delivery timing is uncertain, real world performance may differ from the demonstrated results, the modular design has not yet been proven in the field and manufacturing at scale is untested. It is also worth saying that QCi's system works quite differently from gate based quantum computers, and some researchers have questioned how much of its advantage comes from quantum effects

It is interesting to see this alongside Rigetti's optimisation work this week, which took a hybrid route with a classical solver. Variable counts on their own also do not tell you how good the solutions are or how fast they arrive. Do you think optimisation will be the first area where quantum style hardware pays its way? And how much weight do you give company press releases in this field?

Quantum Computing Inc. Announces Dirac-3S, Scaling to Nearly 10,000 Variableswww.prnewswire.com