Interview | Murray Thom, Vice President of Product Management, D-Wave

Quantum.Tech Europe is around the corner and as one of the leading sponsors, we caught up with D-Wave's Vice President of Product Management, Murray Thom to discuss the D-Wave's key role in driving quantum computing forward and where they have seen the largest breakthrough.

What is D-Wave’s major focus as quantum computing organisation?

D-Wave has a simple mission: to unlock the power of quantum computing today to benefit business and society. Our singular focus is to help customers achieve real value by using quantum computing for practical business applications. 

We take a practical approach to quantum computing. Our philosophy is to build products and services that accelerate developers' time-to-value and help enterprises solve complex business problems that deliver business value today. We do this through continual innovation of both quantum computing hardware and software, providing open-source tools, and building a strong professional services team to help customers on their quantum journey.

D-Wave is the only quantum computing company building both annealing and gate-based quantum computers. We’re also in a unique position as the only quantum computing company with annealing technology built to solve complex problems, today. That means we’re helping enterprises solve their complex business challenges with our quantum annealing solutions right now. Hundreds of early quantum applications have been built using D-Wave’s quantum computing services, with the aim of addressing resource scheduling, mobility, logistics, drug-discovery, portfolio optimization and manufacturing processes. The era of commercial quantum computing is here.

As we look ahead, our focus is to be a platform-agnostic provider, offering cross-platform, open-source tools for both annealing and gate model quantum computers. This ensures we can best meet customers’ multi-platform needs – offering the right solutions for the right applications to drive real-world value and business impact.

What enterprises have you seen the biggest breakthrough with?

Quantum computing has moved from research to reality, as companies increasingly turn to the power of quantum mechanical effects to solve complex computational problems and maximize efficiencies throughout their businesses. It’s no longer a matter of “if” but rather “when” an organization will incorporate quantum computing. In fact, Hyperion Research recently found that nearly 70% of companies surveyed already have an in-house quantum computing program, citing increasing revenue, enhancing business processes, driving innovation, and achieving competitive advantage as top business priorities that quantum computing can help them accomplish.

We’re now seeing a shift in certain quantum use cases, notably optimization-based, that are beginning to move into production, with customers identifying real business problems, developing quantum hybrid proofs-of-concept, piloting them, and beginning to run those use cases in production environments.

In terms of where we’re seeing particularly compelling use cases, it spans a wide variety of industries, including financial services, manufacturing, and life sciences. Our customers – including Accenture, BBVA, Deloitte, Lockheed Martin, Mastercard, Save-On-Foods, and more – are building applications on our systems and seeing value right now in applications from peptide design to employee scheduling to shipping container logistics to financial risk reduction. The potential use cases are limitless.

To help companies expedite bringing the power of quantum to their organization and to make quantum solution implementation as easy as possible for its customers, D-Wave has designed the Launch™ program. The program’s goal is to help companies get started with quantum computing by identifying the right types of business problems to run on a quantum computer and developing solutions to address these complex challenges through its proprietary annealing quantum computing and quantum hybrid technologies.

What can you tell us about the Next-Generation Advantage2 Annealing Quantum Computer?

D-Wave has developed and released five generations of quantum computers, each one providing more computing power and providing a faster pathway toward solving real-world problems. Earlier this year, we were excited to release an experimental prototype of our next-generation Advantage2 annealing quantum computer, which shows great promise with a new Zephyr topology and 20-way inter-qubit connectivity. This new prototype represents an early version of the upcoming full-scale product, and early benchmarks show increased energy scale and improved solution quality. New and existing customers can try out the experimental Advantage2 prototype by signing into Leap™, our quantum cloud service.

Announced in October 2021, as part of the Clarity roadmap, the full Advantage2 system will mark the company’s sixth-generation quantum system. It is expected to feature 7,000 qubits with a new qubit design, enabling 20-way connectivity between qubits in a new topology. In addition, a new, low-noise multi-layer superconducting integrated-circuit fabrication process will provide greater qubit coherence for increased performance. 4. What are you looking forward to the most from sponsoring Quantum.Tech Europe this September? Answer: We’re excited to take part in this year’s conference! Given our position as the first commercial supplier of quantum computers, we have a deep understanding of how to help customers understand what it takes to build solutions for practical applications. We’re looking forward to speaking with attendees at Quantum.Tech Europe about how to not only think about the technical aspects required of quantum implementation, but how to arrive at applications that have the broadest enterprise impact.

Want to hear more from Murray Thom? Join Murray at the Platforms and Processors Evaluation Day as he showcases D-Wave's work in quantum and will be participating in the Panel Discussion: The Path to Commercialization: A roadmap update from the leading processor providers at 11:45am on Day 1 of Quantum.Tech Europe. Don't miss out by registering your spot here.