You know, it's not impossible, but as someone who works in a field peripheral to quantum computing I would be surprised. There are two types of problems in science, the attrition kind where if you throw enough people and enough money at it you'll get it to work and the breakthrough kind where nothing will happen until some a-ha moment. I suspect quantum computing is more of the latter right now; there are just too many outstanding issues for a large-scale device. But who knows, I may be wrong.
Regarding D-Wave specifically, there's plenty of commentary around on what they're doing...
I'm not particularly well read on quantum computing, but it seems like we have reduced it to an engineering challenge at this point. We have already constructed and tested quantom computers with several quibits and (I am aware) of no theoretical limit to how many quibits we can have, so the problem is simply in engineering a device that can operate on all of them succesfully.
This is in contrast to most of the second type of breakthrough, where you typically have a theoretical revelation that opens previously closed doors.
> There are two types of problems in science, the attrition kind where if you throw enough people and enough money at it you'll get it to work and the breakthrough kind where nothing will happen until some a-ha moment.
Thats interesting. What camp would you say flight fell under?
Regarding D-Wave specifically, there's plenty of commentary around on what they're doing...