D-Wave Systems announced Tuesday (Sept. 28, 2016) a new 2000-qubit processor, doubling the number of qubits over the previous-generation D-Wave 2X system. The new system will enable larger problems to be solved and performance improvements of up to 1000 times.

D-Wave’s quantum system runs a quantum-annealing algorithm to find the lowest points in a virtual energy landscape representing a computational problem to be solved. The lowest points in the landscape correspond to optimal or near-optimal solutions to the problem. The increase in qubit count enables larger and more difficult problems to be solved, and the ability to tune the rate of annealing of individual qubits will enhance application performance.

According to D-Wave, users will be able to tune the quantum computational process to solve problems faster and find more diverse solutions when they exist. They will have the ability to sample the state of the quantum computer during the quantum annealing process, which will power hybrid quantum-classical machine learning algorithms that were not possible before.

The system will also allow for combining quantum processing with classical processing, improving the quality of optimization and sampling results returned from the system.

D-Wave’s first users conference, being held on September 28–29 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, features speakers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA, Lockheed Martin, the Roswell Park Cancer Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USC, and D-Wave, and a number of quantum software and services companies.