Quantum Interview: Murray Thom, Vice President of Product Management, D-Wave

Ahead of Quantum.Tech Boston, we caught up with Murray Thom, Vice President of Product Management at D-Wave who are one of Quantum.Tech's leading sponsors. We found out how D-wave is working with the global developer community, what advice Murray would give to any CTO/CIO looking at quantum technologies for the first time and explained the overview of their On-Board to Quantum Computing Service.

What do you think of the potential rise of Quantum as a Service?

We’re firm believers in QCaaS and recognized early on how critical cloud-based access to quantum computing solutions would be for customers. We launched our quantum cloud service, Leap, in 2018 to provide real-time access to our quantum system and have seen first-hand how QCaaS’ ease-of-access is driving accelerated quantum adoption from enterprises, developers, and governments. Nearly 11 million problems have been run on our Advantage™ quantum computer through hybrid solvers in the cloud, and we only expect to see that usage increase.

How is D-Wave working with the global developer community?

First, we’re giving developers access to the only real-time quantum computer available in the cloud in the world. That really stands out. Second, we’ve given them the ability to use our powerful systems and hybrid solvers for a free minute (and a minute more each month if they open source their work and attach their GitHub credentials), which translates to hundreds of different problems. That has really accelerated demand and adoption. In addition to access, our Leap™ quantum cloud service helps developers build hybrid quantum applications and put those applications into production by offering quantum hybrid solvers, open-source tools, software development kits, libraries, code examples, demos, a full-featured online IDE, documentation and a growing quantum community. All of this translates into supporting an entirely new generation of quantum pioneers!

If you were talking to a CIO/CTO at a major enterprise looking at quantum technologies for the first time what advice would you give them?

What we hear most often from CIOs is “where do I get started?”, “what are the best use cases for quantum?” and “how far away is quantum computing?” Most are surprised to learn that in fact, annealing quantum computers are delivering real business value today. A report by 451 Research found that 81% of companies plan to have quantum use cases in the next three years, and we’re already beginning to see positive impact from quantum computing. In fact, Hyperion Research recently found that nearly 70% of companies surveyed already have an in-house quantum computing program, citing increasing revenue, enhancing business processes, driving innovation, and achieving competitive advantage as top business priorities that quantum computing can help them accomplish.

While the technology may be complex, the value to enterprises is quite simple: quantum computing finds solutions to problems that couldn’t be previously solved or solves problems faster with more optimal solutions – both of which can ultimately generate an increase in revenue or decrease cost at a time when businesses are facing ever-increasing complexity. Our customers – including Accenture, BBVA, DENSO, Lockheed Martin, Save-On-Foods, and more – are building towards in-production applications on our systems and are seeing value right now in applications from peptide design to employee scheduling to shipping container logistics to financial risk reduction.

It’s also important for CIOs to understand that it’s easy to get started. We’ve designed an onboarding approach called D-Wave Launch™ that streamlines the process – going from problem discovery and proof-of-concept applications, to quantum pilots and finally in-production applications, to get organizations up-and-running with quantum development quickly.

What is the most interesting real world application of D Wave technologies that you have seen?

It’s hard to narrow it down to just one! Our customers are always exploring and developing new use cases - everything from last-mile vehicle routing to shipping container logistics to portfolio optimization to RNA folding and clinical trial optimization.

One interesting use case comes from Volkswagen, an early adopter of D-Wave’s annealing quantum computer, which expanded its quantum use cases with the hybrid solver service to build a paint shop scheduling application. The algorithm is designed to optimize the order in which cars are being painted. By using the hybrid solver service, the number of color switches will be reduced significantly, leading to performance improvements and a reduction in waste.

In the life sciences space, Menten AI has seen a significant speed up over the best classical solution and is testing their hybrid quantum COVID-19 protein solutions in the wet lab. Canadian supermarket chain Save-On-Foods has seen the benefits of using a hybrid quantum approach on a grocery optimization problem, reducing the number of hours a running a problem took from 25 hours a week down to 2 minutes. And CaixaBank has seen an up to 90% decrease in time-to-solution for investment portfolio hedging and portfolio optimization with quantum computing. It’s incredibly rewarding to see the value quantum is bringing to these businesses.

What industry verticals do you see most suited to the potential applications of quantum computing?

Any industry that is dealing with complex optimization problems can benefit from quantum computing today. We’re seeing a lot of opportunity and interest from companies in manufacturing and logistics, financial services and life sciences right now.

Are you able to give us a little more information about your ‘On-Board to Quantum Computing Service?

We’ve created an onboarding program, Launch, that gives forward-thinking organizations the opportunity to see quantum as a way to get ahead of the competition. We’ve purposefully designed an approach that makes it incredibly easy to get started and infuse quantum solutions into a business quickly. Our four-step process involves:

• Problem discovery – organizations often ask us about what types of problems could most benefit from the use of hybrid quantum solutions. During this phase we work together to identify the best use case.
• Quantum proof of concept – once the problem is identified, we help customers develop a quantum PoC and prototype application. The purpose of this phase is to test business-relevant problems in real conditions.
• Production pilot – next we move to deploying a limited production-scale application, whether that’s within one line of business or testing it within the customer’s environment.
• In-production – once the pilot is successfully completed, we move to the most exciting part – getting the quantum application up and running to benefit our customer’s business.

How far do you think we are off Quantum Supremacy?

Quantum supremacy may be interesting, but what we find to be even more compelling is practical, customer-ready applications that demonstrate the business value of quantum computing. There are two types of use cases for quantum computing technology today: early commercial applications and scientific research. We believe both are important, but our current focus is on solving practical problems and the ability to make a difference for the customer. D-Wave customers have shown signs of this in real-world problems and have seen speedups over the best available classical solvers.

Do you see quantum computing replacing or augmenting classical computing in years to come?

We’ve always believed enabling hybrid computing is central to achieving our quantum future. The combination of the best quantum approaches and the best classical computing methods will be the most optimal way to solve problems. In fact, we recently introduced a constrained quadratic hybrid solver that now supports continuous variables, expanding the scope of quantum solutions into the Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) space.

As we look ahead, performant, high-value hybrid solvers across multiple problem types will continue to expand and deliver the benefits of both quantum and classical resources for both annealing quantum computers and gate-model systems for emerging quantum use cases. There will certainly be complex problems quantum computing will handle alone, there will be other problems that will be better served with a hybrid approach, and there will always be some simple computations easily served by classical systems.

You are kindly one of our lead sponsors at Quantum.Tech in Boston this June; what are you looking forward to at the conference?

We’re thrilled to be a part of this year’s conference! It’s shaping up to be quite a show. We’re looking forward to sharing more about how we’re helping organizations around the world get started working with – and seeing benefit from – quantum computing solutions, today. We’re also excited to engage in dialogue with our industry peers and partners around our collective progress in bringing quantum technology to market. The future is here.