dwave

D-Wave Systems is a Canadian company that develops quantum computing hardware and software. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Burnaby, British Columbia, it focuses on quantum annealing processors intended for solving optimization problems. Unlike gate-model quantum computers, D-Wave’s devices are designed around adiabatic quantum computing principles, using superconducting flux qubits to explore low-energy configurations of problem Hamiltonians.

D-Wave released a series of hardware generations beginning with the D-Wave One in 2011, a 128-qubit device, followed by D-Wave Two and D-Wave 2000Q, which expanded the qubit counts to 2,000. The current flagship is the Advantage system, introduced around 2019, which uses the Pegasus connectivity topology and a large number of qubits (advertised as thousands) to address more complex problems. The company emphasizes that the qubits function as part of a quantum annealing process rather than a general-purpose processor.

Software and cloud access: D-Wave provides the Ocean software development kit for formulating problems in QUBO and Ising representations, along with tools such as dimod and neal. Access to D-Wave hardware is offered through Leap, its cloud platform, and through the Hybrid Solver Service, which combines quantum and classical computation to solve larger problems efficiently.

Impact and reception: D-Wave has positioned its technology for optimization, scheduling, logistics, finance, and materials design applications. The broader quantum computing community debates the extent of practical quantum speedups and how their devices compare with classical optimization techniques. D-Wave’s approach emphasizes hybrid quantum-classical workflows and domain-specific advantages rather than a universal quantum computer.