Quantum computing is the dream of physicists and computer scientists alike. And in sci-fi movies and TV shows, it's the easy explanation applied to everything from anti-gravity gadgets to time travel. So the leap from theory to practice, when D-Wave offered its first-ever public demonstration of Orion in mid-February, was huge.

A few weeks ago D-Wave made a bold claim when it unveiled what it calls "the world's first commercial quantum computer." The system, called Orion, currently resides in Burnaby, BC, and is causing heated debate across the Web.

According to International Business Times, many researchers balked at D-Wave's claim to have developed a complete working system based on quantum computing. Then in March, NASA confirmed in an IT World post that D-Wave designed the specifications and then contracted NASA itself to build the special chip used in the demonstration.

The key to the debate is to understand what D-Wave is really claiming. According to International Business Times, "D-Wave Chief Executive Herb Martin emphasized that the machine is not a true quantum computer and is instead a kind of special-purpose machine that uses some quantum mechanics to solve problems." If that's the case, the machine may be more of an early prototype than the full-blown quantum system that some demonstration attendees might have expected.

Martin told Byte and Switch the importance of D-Wave's research was the increased computing speed it would produce for the end user on targeted applications. "You can have this massive explosion of computation power... What [the chips] are good at is following lots of computational paths simultaneously." He lists number-crunching chores such as life-sciences research as the kind of problem solving that could benefit from a powerful computing boost.

Pushing away criticisms about the true nature of its processing, D-Wave has aggressive goals for the Orion system. According to "IT World," Martin said the Feb. 13 demonstration already had a chip capable of running at 16 qubits. The company has a projected plan for 32 qubits by the end of 2007, and 1,024 qubits by the end of 2008. And the CTO of D-Wave says in his blog that the company plans free access to one of these systems sometime in Q2 of 2007 for people who want to develop or to port applications using the system's problem-solving capabilities.

Take a look at our story on ExtremeTech for more details. Post by Melody Chamlee