How are IBM's 127 qubits more potent than the 5760 qubits D-Wave - Advantage_system6.1?

Question

Hi I'm a newbie in quantum computing recently I had a look at the AWS braket and I've seen they had a machine called D-Wave - Advantage_system6.1 that has 5760 qubits but when I googled the highest qubits quantum computer so far it showed me IBM's 127-qubit Eagle processor is the most potent Quantum computer so far! How are IBM's 127 qubits more potent than the 5760 qubits D-Wave - Advantage_system6.1?

Also, should I learn Amazon braket or IBM quantum computing using Qiskit?

Thank you. sorry for my English.

Answer 1

They are different kinds of quantum computers:

The D-Wave is a quantum Annealer. A rather specific (non-general purpose) device that can solve QUBO-type problems.

IBM offers universal gate-based quantum computers. They can in principle solve everything the D-Wave can. But with this generality comes the downside of control.

As regards to your questions, you should learn depending on what problems do you want to solve.

Answer 2

As the other answers have stated, they're two substantially different systems that are unfortunately both marketed as quantum computers.

D-Wave is more specifically a quantum annealer. At a high level, it works by encoding a function you'd like to optimize and the system will tend to the lowest possible energy state, which should correspond to the optimal solution to the problem. This makes it powerful for solving a particular class of problems. However, the 'quantum-ness' of a such a 'computer' is debatable. While it does utilize qubits to perform these calculations, these annealers don't utilize the uniquely quantum resources of superposition and entanglement.

IBM and others' quantum computers are what people generally mean when they use the term. They can perform gate-based algorithms on qubits that utilize superposition and entanglement to enable new algorithms like Shor's, Grover's, and more. These computers are much more general than quantum annealers, because they can run any classical algorithm as well as strictly quantum algorithms, but have also been much harder to scale.

Answer 3

My understanding isn't as deep, but those are two different quantum hardware systems. IBMs system is a gate based one, akin to a normal CPU. The d-Wave one is a Quantum Annealing system, that isn't generally usable as well as needing a much higher number of qubits to do the same task.

This is a good read on the differences of both: https://www.quantumcomputinginc.com/blog/quantum-annealing-gate/

Answer 4

The D-Wave machine is a quantum annealer running adiabatic quantum computing algorithms. This is great for optimizing solutions to problems by quickly searching over a space and finding a minimum (or “solution”). But quantum annealing works best on problems where there are a lot of potential solutions and finding a “good enough” or “local minima” solution, making something like faster flight possible. However, quantum annealing can’t efficiently run Shor’s algorithm, which breaks common forms of modern cryptography used to protect our bank information, logins, and all web communication.

Universal gate quantum computing is much broader. A universal gate quantum computing system relies on building reliable qubits where basic quantum circuit operations, similar to the classical operations we all know, can be put together to create any sequence, running increasingly complex algorithms. Algorithms like Shor’s (to break RSA cryptography) and Grover’s (faster search) as well as the approximately 50 other quantum algorithms will also be able to run on a universal quantum computer.

This means that a universal quantum computer can be used for many more problems than a quantum annealer, but comes with its own challenges and a different design than a quantum annealer. The quantum annealer, like D-Wave, is becoming a great standard for proof of concept, but design of universal quantum computing chips for various applications and making sure that qubits are properly manufactured will be the tipping point for the quantum computing industry.

Read this article for a better understanding