Quantum computers: Are we there yet

Can quantum computers indeed meet the promise of doing complex calculations faster than classical computers based on transistor technologies While the holy grail of a programmable universal quantum computer will probably still take decades to reach one can already begin to answer this question by testing programmable quantum annealing machines that are currently being built These machines such as D Wave 2 use a non mainstream method known as adiabatic quantum annealing to perform optimization tasks Very recently