Navy to use extraordinary computer to crack problems

NASA is giving Navy researchers in San Diego access to an unusually powerful computer that might help users do such things as better forecast the outcome of battles and more efficiently control the collective movement of unmanned vehicles.

Scientists at the Navy’s Spawar Systems Center Pacific (SSCP) are already learning how to use the D-Wave 2X quantum computer housed at the NASA Ames Research Center near San Francisco.

“The D-Wave is an evolving technology that is faster than a conventional computer and can do many things at one time,” said Joanna Ptasinski, a SSCP engineer who is involved in the project.

NASA and its partner, Google, say that the D-Wave 2X can run algorithms 100 million times faster than conventional transistor-based computers. Such tests suggest the quantum computers might be able to handle some problems and tasks in seconds or minutes, rather than in years and decades. Time magazine referred to quantum computers as “infinity machines” that could revolutionize computing.

But scientists caution that they’re only at the proof-of-concept stage with quantum computers, which process information differently than conventional computers.

SSCP uses scouts to find and evaluate emerging technologies. The goal is to improve intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, as well as the communications and computer systems that the Navy uses in everything from warships to aircraft to vehicles