Interview | Murray Thom, Vice President of Product Management at D-Wave Systems Inc.

Murray Thom, Vice President of Product Management at D-Wave Systems Inc. shares his thoughts on the challenges facing Quantum industry and explores the real life examples of Quantum technology. Murray also explains whether he thinks Quantum Computing will replace Classical Computing.

Can you explain what your company does within the quantum landscape?

D-Wave is the only full stack provider of quantum hardware, software and services, and the first commercial supplier of quantum computers. Our mission is to unlock the power of quantum computing for the world. Because of our focus and this investment in practical applications, we’ve seen how our technology impacts a diverse set of industries, including manufacturing, logistics, financial services, healthcare, and more – demonstrating quantum computing’s market impact beyond solely solving hypothetical research problems. We owe our commercial success to annealing quantum computing. Quantum annealing harnesses the tendency of things in nature to remain in their lowest energy state. Our quantum systems harness quantum mechanics to compute highly complex problems by looking across a vast landscape of solutions very quickly and finding a selection of the best, lowest energy solutions. We do this with superconducting qubits.

Today, our Advantage quantum system has 5000+ qubits and more than 15-way connectivity. This is the greatest inter-qubit connectivity of any available quantum computer today, and allows for solving larger, more complex problems, and helps obtain higher quality solutions. We also offer a quantum hybrid solver service available in the Leap quantum cloud service, that brings the best of quantum and classical resources to businesses that are looking to solve complex problems with multiple variables and constraints.

D-Wave’s quantum hybrid solvers solve real-world problems with up to a million variables, enabling companies to solve complicated problems that have commercial value. The combination of the powerful Advantage quantum computer underpinning the hybrid sover services in Leap allows us to deliver upon business value that we call “customer advantage.”

What has been your biggest challenge in the industry?

The biggest challenge in the industry for many companies is delivering upon actual quantum computing technology. There’s a lot of theory, and a lot of science, but not a lot of actual, usable technology that delivers customer value. And because of that, there’s a narrative in the technology and science spaces that quantum computing’s potential is years and years in the future. That’s false. In recent years, we’re seeing that we’re much closer to realizing full commercial potential. At D-Wave, we’ve created a product pipeline that is regularly delivering valuable hardware, software and services, today. In fact, because we’re on our 5th generation of quantum computers, D-Wave has already helped countless businesses leverage quantum computing to achieve their business goals through the optimization power of annealing quantum systems. Gradually we’re seeing other quantum computing companies enter the mainstream, partner with Fortune 500 companies, plan to go public, and more. I’m glad to see that the industry is turning a corner, and that enterprises, advanced research arms, and the next generation of developers are already beginning to see the tremendous benefits to building practical quantum applications with real-world value.

Can you give any good real world examples of the implementation of your technologies?

A great example of quantum making a difference in one of the world’s most crucial industries is the recent impact it’s had on healthcare. Last year, D-Wave ran and completed a COVID-19 initiative, resulting in some fascinating practical applications including programs from Menten AI. San Francisco-based startup Menten AI developed the first process using hybrid quantum programs to determine protein structure for de novo protein design. Their unique protein designs have been computationally validated, chemically synthesized, and advanced to live-virus testing against COVID-19.

On the manufacturing front, Volkswagen, an early adopter of D-Wave’s technology, has expanded its quantum use cases with the hybrid solver service to build a paint shop scheduling application. The algorithm is designed to optimize the order in which cars are being painted. By using the hybrid solver service, the number of color switches will be reduced significantly, leading to performance improvements.

Further, one of our partners, Multiverse, is working with international banks Bankia and BBVA to solve portfolio optimization problems that have proven intractable to classical computing approaches. Multiverse is a leader in developing quantum computing-based solutions for the financial sector and by using D-Wave’s quantum hybrid solver service, combining the strengths of classical and quantum computing, the company developed an algorithmic approach that rapidly generates optimized portfolios. These are just a few examples out of the more than 250 early quantum applications our enterprise customers have built. With quantum computing, the opportunities really are endless.

Do you think quantum computing will augment or replace classical computing?

Quantum computing will always be complementary to classical computing. Quantum computers aren’t for every type of problem. In fact, there are many problems that can be solved better or more efficiently classically than on a quantum computer. Where quantum computers can be most powerful is when they are solving very complex problems, known as NP-hard problems.

At D-Wave, it’s more about harnessing the power of the combined systems and because of that, we believe that the future of quantum computing is hybrid. Quantum hybrid brings the best of classical together with the best of quantum to help rapidly and accurately solve a broad array of customers’ business problems. We’ve been using hybrid computing since 2014 and have seen an incredible return on our investment. Hybrid computing is important to further our customers’ business applications – whether that may be increasing efficiency for a manufacturing giant or improving profitability at a Fortune 500 company. We have invested a significant amount of time and energy learning how to ensure that customers don’t have to worry about which part or parts of their problems need to run on which system. Instead, our hybrid solver services in the Leap quantum cloud service ensure that the greatest benefits of the two computing paradigms work together to deliver the best results for customers.

Where do you think we’ll be seeing the future global centre of quantum?

Quantum computing is, and will be, location-less. Given the ability to access live quantum computers via the cloud – that could be D-Wave’s Leap quantum cloud service or another platform – any business or developer can get started today, whether or not they have a background in quantum or a PhD in quantum physics. Gone are the days when developers and businesses needed access to a physical quantum system in order to explore quantum technology. Now any laptop – whether you’re in Canada or Singapore – holds the power of a quantum computer as long as you have access to a quantum cloud service! In addition to breaking down borders, this cloud first approach enables ongoing technology innovations, ensuring customers are getting the best systems, software and tools for quantum computing that are available, as soon as they become available.