We Are Coming to You Live from the Coldest Place in the Known Universe

As we sit here in our warehouse, just a stone's throw away from the headquarters of D-Wave, the world leader in commercial quantum computing systems, I can't help but think that this is exactly what I was expecting. The title and thumbnail of this video have clearly piqued my interest, and I'm eager to see what we'll be getting up to today.

Let's Take a Look at Some Cool Tech

Before we head out to explore the world of quantum computing, let's take a look at some cool tech. As it happens, Cooler Master is celebrating its 25th anniversary edition with a special release - the Cosmos 2. This feature-rich computer boasts a unique dual-curved tempered glass side panel that's sure to turn heads.

D-Wave: The Pioneer of Quantum Computing

In 2007, D-Wave introduced its first quantum processor, which featured an impressive 16 qubits. At the time, this was hardly groundbreaking technology - after all, you could solve many problems with a pencil and a piece of paper. But what D-Wave's founders realized was that scalability was key to making quantum computing accessible to a wider audience.

By adding more qubits to their systems, D-Wave was able to increase the complexity of the problems they could tackle. This led to some impressive advancements in fields like logistics, climate change, and energy distribution. And while we may not be ready for quantum gaming just yet - I mean, tackling Call of Duty: Black Ops 10 on a D-Wave machine is hardly likely to happen anytime soon - these systems have the potential to disrupt the status quo in many areas.

Behind the Scenes with D-Wave

Now that we've talked about the benefits of quantum computing, let's take a closer look at what it looks like in practice. As it happens, our hosts are going behind the scenes with D-Wave itself - and we're invited to join them on this tour!

As We Explore the World of Quantum Computing

We'll get to see some of the latest generation 2000Q systems running here at D-Wave's headquarters. These machines are available through the cloud, which means that researchers and scientists from all over the world can access them for their own research purposes.

But don't worry - our hosts won't be messing around with anything too complicated just yet! After all, as they say, "these puppies right here have the potential to completely disrupt the existing players." For now, let's just take a look at what these systems can do.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enWe are coming to you live from the coldest place in the known universeWell, near it anyway. What would you say if I told you that the headquarters for D-Wave - the world leader in commercialquantum computing systems - is a stone's throw from our warehouse?And what would you say if I told you that they invited us in for abehind-the-scenes tour? Well Linus, I'd probably say that's exactly what I was expecting,given the title and thumbnail of this video, stop wasting my time.Got it. Let's go.Cooler Master's 25th anniversary EditionCosmos 2 features a uniqueDual curved tempered glass side panel. Check it out now at the link belowSo in 2007 D-Wave introduced their firstquantum processor. Now, with only 16 qubits,it wasn't especially powerful.But the point wasn't whether you could or couldn't solve the same problems with a pencil and a piece of paper.The point was that thisscalable approach would allow them to ship the world's first commercial quantum computer the D-Wave One in2011 with128 qubits followed by 5121000 and2000 cubic designs in 2013, 2015, and 2017respectively. And adding more qubits is the key to increasing performance because the more qubits you have, the morecomplex the problems that you can tackle. You see quantum computing doesn't work likeclassical computing with ones and zeros where you feed it aquestion and then it spits out ananswer. Instead a quantum processor takes all of the parameters you feed it and works onEvery solution pointing you at one or two or maybe even moreoptimalSolutions. So they're not perfect for everything.I don't think there's a single person in this building who expects Call of Duty: Black Ops 10 to run on a D-Wave mach 5Quantum gaming rig or anything like that but for scheduling out of sports teams games over the course of a seasonFor tackling problems like logistics climate change and Energy distribution or for conducting AI researchThese puppies right here have the potential to completelydisrupt the existing players.So then let's go have a look at one shallwe? Now there are only a handful of customers in the world who haveActually ponied up the price of a D-Wave systemincluding high Rollers like Lockheed Martin, Los Alamos National Lab, Google, and Nasa. But D-WaveThemselves have a handful of their latest generation 2000Q systems running here at theirheadquarters that are available through the cloud just make sure that you don't turn off any of the ones with adelightfully Low-Tech \"Online\" sign zip-tied to it it might be doing very very important research. So from the outside a2000Q doesn't look that different from any other compute cluster with a few black racks and when you open up door number oneThere's not much at first glance to indicate that there's anything special about itYou'll find a network switch, a UPS for battery backup, a normal serverresponsible for monitoring some monitoring devices thatWait a minute!seven Eight Degrees MilliKelvin we're going to have to get back to that later.There's also a second server that takes aproblem and translates it into machine codeusing custom room temperatureelectronics to generate high precision analog signals that it then sends to, as we promised, just about thecoldest place in the known universeThe single, yes, just one chip, single code named, Washington,quantum processor at the heart of this machine, but where exactly is it?It's not behind Door 2,or door number 3back there you'll find the first and second stage pumps that are used to create a vacuum around the processor toThermally insulate itand it's cooling system from the outside world as well as a compressor for the aforementioned cooling system, andYou also won't find it in thisBarrel shapedDoodad that is actually a liquid nitrogenfilter that removes impurities from the Coolant mixture of Helium-3 and Helium-4Isotopes and is one of the things that allows D-Wave systems to run for years at a time a critical featureGiven that the chip kind of locks into a certain configurationOnce it's supercooled and if you heat one of these puppies up back to room temperatureit can take up to two days to cool it back down and up to four weeks to finish the therebalancing orrecalibration process. No, no, to find the actual processor,we have to go past this first door on the left here that handles connecting theall-business racks at the front to thegiant box here that was hiding in plain sight that I'll be referring to as the \"party in the back\" orper D-Wave's gentle suggestion, the\"shielded enclosure\". This right here is effectively a big faraday cage and the first ofsixteen layers of shielding that are designed to shield the Powerlines andpreserve the integrity of thesignals to and from the quantum processor to the greatest degree possibleAnd that was a very intentional pun by the way nownormally these rooms are closed and there is a series ofcasings ontop of this apparatus here to maintain the vacuum around what is effectively theMotherboard of our quantum computer, but they had one open for maintenance today, so we've got to get up close and personalThe thing is peppered with probes and sensors,heat exchangers, data wires,but the five big plates are really the main attraction here.Each of them represents a different stage of the cooling systemThe top one gets signals from the outside world on copper wires and runs on a frosty70 degrees Kelvin the next one down uses the same fridge and these braided copperconductors to get down to four degrees Kelvin, which is both low enough to Condense helium to a liquid andTo switch over from Copper wires to the superconductorNiobium the middle plate here uses vacuum helium for to drop our signal wires to one degreeKelvin the Fourth uses Helium-3To get us to about it to a tenth of that and the final stage uses a sophisticatedMixture of those two isotopes to drive this entireFiltering and shielding apparatus as well as the processor insidedown to its typical operating temperature of about oh point zero one five degrees Kelvin damn nearAbsolute zeroBut why does it need to be so cold?Niobium already super conducts at nine Degrees, Kelvininterstellar Space is3.1 degrees Kelvin our solar system is even warmer. We're talking oh point zero one five degrees Kelvin wellthisSuperconducting chip here is what's inside there, and it's connected via four hundredsuperconducting wiresAnd this is kind of like the pins on a CPU socket and what it's doing if it's usingQuantum mechanical effects to process information.So for that to work,these effects need to be significant enough to use them forcomputation, which means that the temperature needs to bewell belowthe energy scale of those quantum effects if itwasn't, then the data you'd get would be very very noisy,corrupted by heat related quantum effects.That's why the colder they can get, pretty much, the better and getting even colder in the futuremay actually be practical. Sothis generation of the waste processors consumes no power and outputs no heatmeaning that the 20 kilowatts of power that are required to run system is justDedicated to the cooling system. So unless they wanted to go colder this energy costdoesn't change whether you're running a hundred cubits or2,000 cubits, that's just the sweet spot ofpracticality and functionalityToday and more cooling is far from the only thing on the horizon. the future's looking bright for our neighbors here at D-Wavethey don't have a50-Year vision yet necessarily,but in the nearer term they don't really perceive anyone else in the space as a real competitor with acommercializable technology and with more R&D focus they think their system could be as compact asthree or four racks andcapable of taking on some of the hardestNeural Network problems that we face in the years to come and you know what?Sounds pretty good to me.Dollar Shave Club is kind of amazing you can get their high quality bladesand they're amazing shave butter,which goes on clear,delivered to your doorfor less than what you'd pay to have toactually get off your own butt to drive to the store, fight with someone to open up the security cage, and buyrazor blades there.It's ridiculous! And for a limited time new members can get their first month of the executive razorWith a Tube of Dr.Carver's shave butter for only 5 bucks with free shipping and after that your razors are just a few bucks a monthso that's a $15 value for just 5 bucks. Anddon't forget that Dollar Shave Club offers more than just razors. Along with shave butter,they have an awesome selection of high-quality grooming products from hairstyling to shower products that you can get just like their razorsDelivered to your door so get your first month for just 5 bucks at dollarshaveclub.com/Linus- that's dollarshaveclub.com/Linus-So thanks to D-Wave for hosting us here. Thanks to you guys for watching if you dislike this videoYou know where that button isbut if you liked it hit the like button get subscribed, andmaybe check out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description, okay?Less applicable for this video than usual, but we also have links down there to our merch storeWhich has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join\n"