D-Wave, la única empresa en el mundo que ofrece actualmente un ordenador cuántico funcionando, abre una subsidiaria enfocada en Washington, con la esperanza de sacar provecho del creciente interés del gobierno de Estados Unidos en la computación cuántica.
WASHINGTON — Hoping to cash in on an increasing US government interest in quantum computing, D-Wave Systems is launching a Washington-focused subsidiary.
D-Wave, based in British Columbia, is the only company in the world currently offering a functioning quantum computer. They have sold systems, which run in the range of $10 million per computer, to three customers: Lockheed Martin, Google and the Los Alamos national laboratory. However, there are government customers, such as the Navy, who are renting time on D-Wave owned computers.
Bo Ewald, president of D-Wave International, told Defense News that the decision to open a government-focused subsidiary was in many ways a practical one.
“The US government is the largest procurer of computers on the planet. They also are the ones who typically apply technologies before others do for programmatic needs, whether it be the Pentagon programs or Department of Energy or the intelligence community,” Ewald said.
“I don’t have an exact dollar figure [for potential business], but I can imagine that as this business really gets rolling that there will be several of these big systems within the DoD, the DoE labs, the intelligence community networks,” he added. “Whether they lease them, purchase them or are using a cloud service, it’s too early to tell yet.”
The new subsidiary will be known as D-Wave Government Inc. and will be led by René Copeland, currently director of government sales for the company. The board will be chaired by Jeffrey K. Harris, a former Lockheed executive who also served as director of the National Reconnaissance Office and assistant secretary of the Air Force.
Other board members include Delores Etter, former deputy under secretary of defense for science and technology and assistant secretary of the Navy; Frances Fleisch, former executive director of the National Security Agency and special adviser to U.S Strategic Command; and Donald Kerr, a former director at Los Alamos who also served in top roles with NRO and the CIA.
Whereas traditional computers base everything on either a 0 or a 1, quantum computers are able to perform much more complex operations. Because of that, they can process data sets at a significantly higher rate than traditional computing systems.
Quantum technologies offer major potential across the tech industry, but could be particularly game changing for the Pentagon when it comes to concepts such as protected communications. However, a 2015 study by the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, an independent federal advisory committee made up of 50 scientists and researchers, concluded that in many cases quantum technologies are too complicated for the payoff.
At the time the study concluded, Werner Dahm, a former chief scientist of the Air Force who serves as the board’s chairman, told reporters that “these systems have enormous potential, but there is much more hype than reality in there.”
Fuente: http://www.defensenews.com
