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| Geordie Rose and D-Wave computer Image copyright BBC News |
A $15m computer that uses "quantum physics" effects to boost its speed is to be installed at a Nasa facility.
It will be shared by Google, Nasa, and other scientists, providing access to a machine said to be up to 3,600 times faster than conventional computers.
Reportedly costing up to $15m, housed in a garden shed-sized box that cools the chip to near absolute zero, it should be installed at Nasa and available for research by autumn 2013.
US giant Lockheed Martin earlier this year upgraded its own D-Wave machine to the 512 qubit D-Wave Two.
Unlike standard machines, the D-Wave Two processor appears to make use of an effect called quantum tunnelling.
This allows it to reach solutions to certain types of mathematical problems in fractions of a second.
Effectively, it can try all possible solutions at the same time and then select the best.
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.
Geordie Rose believes others have taken the wrong approach to quantum computing
Annealing is made possible by physics effect known as quantum tunnelling, which can endow each qubit with an awareness of every other one.
Read the entire news article introducing a BBC 4 radio program from here
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