D-Wave Systems Inc. today updated its cloud-based quantum computing platform, giving users access to more powerful hardware and software in order to accelerate the delivery of new, in-production quantum applications.

D-Wave is widely regarded as the first company in the world to have built a working quantum computer. Quantum computers have the potential to solve incredibly complex problems as they’re based on a fundamentally different and vastly more powerful computer architecture. They rely on quantum-mechanical phenomena such as superposition and entanglement to perform computation, which makes them exponentially faster than classical computers.

The company said its latest quantum computer, the D-Wave Advantage system (pictured), is available now via its Leap quantum cloud service.

The Advantage system doubles the computing power of the company’s previous D-Wave 2000Q system to 5,000 qubits, and enables each of those qubits to connect to 15 other qubits, up from just six in the earlier system. What that means is that D-Wave Advantage has two and a half times more connectivity, enabling it to solve more complex problems with fewer physical qubits than its predecessor.

Qubits are different to the binary digits or “bits” used in classical computers. Whereas bits are represented as 1 or 0, qubits have the unique ability to be “superpositioned,” which means they can be represented as 1s, 0s or both states at the same time. Qubits also use something called “superdense coding” that allows them to hold two bits simultaneously. So two superpositioned bits held in one qubit means they can process four times the data of ordinary computers.

Together with the new Advantage system, D-Wave announced a new “discrete quadratic model solver,” or DQM, as part of the Leap service that enables the D-Wave Advantage system to tackle more complex problems. Whereas D-Wave 2000Q could only be used to tackle problems with binary variables (0 or 1), the DQM solver makes it possible to use more variable sets such as integers ranging from 1 to 10, or red, yellow and blue, according to the company.

Finally, D-Wave said it’s launching a new jumpstart program for businesses that need support in building hybrid quantum applications called D-Wave Launch.

D-Wave said the Advantage system has already been put to use by early adopters, including Menten AI, a company that uses synthetic biology, machine learning and quantum computing to develop human-made proteins for therapeutic and industrial purposes.

“Using hybrid quantum applications, we’re able to solve astronomical protein design problems that help us create new protein structures,” said Menten AI co-founder and Chief Executive Hans Melo. “We’ve seen extremely encouraging results with hybrid quantum procedures often finding better solutions than competing classical solvers for de novo protein design. This means we can create better proteins and ultimately enable new drug discoveries.”

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller said today’s announcements show that while qubit progress is important, the quantum computing market is now evolving toward better integration with existing computer infrastructures and higher-level software products.

“D-Wave is a great example of this, releasing its new Advantage platform with better traditional computing integration, software innovation with its quadratic solver and of course more qubits,” Mueller said. “Perhaps the most important thing, though, is that more enterprises are using quantum for more diverse use cases.”

Photo: D-Wave