D-Wave (not to be confused with D-Wade) bringing us ever closer . . .

Oh bliss, thy name is quantum computing . . . and thou art ever closer to my heart.  Why?  Because according to Hamish Johnston, a small firm based in Canada that aims to build a commercially viable quantum computer has shown that an important part of its technology works. D-Wave Systems, which was spun-out of the University of British Columbia in 1999, has shown that a technique called quantum annealing can be used to make eight coupled quantum bits – or qubits – find their ground state. According to the firm’s chief technology officer Geordie Rose, the announcement is the first of several scientific results that D-Wave will be unveiling – including one that he claims is “mind blowing”.