Last I heard (I work there, but not in hardware) it takes a couple of technicians a few weeks to install the machine onsite, but after that, they're extremely low maintenance. The skill required to use them "locally" is quite the same as using them on the cloud, and we regularly have undergrad co-ops get up to speed using them. No PhDs required.
That said, we're much more focused on cloud sales; under that model, big customers get dedicated resources and everybody gets access to machines just about as fast as we make them.
I’ll admit, it’s quite a feat if the machine can be self-regulated without scientist hand-holding. Is that true? Does that machine self-correct from calibration drift?
I'm not familiar enough with our calibration code to speak to that directly, but we can do calibrations remotely without sending techs out. I'm told that the impressive thing is that our dilution fridges can run for several years uninterrupted.
If I know my history,* the first programmable classical computer was made in 1941; we had the D-Wave One programmable quantum computer in 2011. So... the 50s?
We need a Wiki-ish Chrome plugin that pastes in actual prices on all websites that have "contact sales" pricing. If you are the first to contact sales, you can fill it in for future customers to see without needing to contact sales.
This would also help expose price discrimination, in which companies give favorable pricing to people of a certain race or nationality or industry or location.
I hate it when I contact sales and they ask "may we know more about your application?" and my next thought is always "how about you tell me your price first, and then I'll be happy to share". "may we know your name" -> "why, so you can decide your offer price based on if I'm white or asian or something?". "may we know your location" -> "why, so you can decide your price based on the average income in my area?"
This sounds just like someone calling up McClaren or Ferrari and demanding an MSRP on one of their Formula-1 cars... and screaming RACISM if they don't have an immediate answer.
Systems like this are not just sitting on a shelf with a price tag... there are tons of other considerations going on here: integration, deployment and support contracts... required infrastructure like power, network switches - even cabling can go into the tens of thousands of dollars.
No chrome plugin is going to fix this "contact sales" problem, and assuming some nefarious racist intent only goes to show that the inquiry is a waste of time for the person on the other end of the line.
> and screaming RACISM if they don't have an immediate answer
Oh I can tell you plenty of stories of suppliers giving you lower prices depending on what human language you speak with them. It happens, and people should know that it happens.
> even cabling can go into the tens of thousands of dollars
For those types of products, great, I'd like to know that cabling will be ~$10K-$50K, fixed costs will be $10K, and support contracts will be ~$1-5K/month. I just want an order of magnitude. Is this $100, $1000, or $100,000 that I'm looking at? I want an order of magnitude before a phone call. If such a plugin existed, at least I could see the distributions in pricing among past customers.
It's something like $2k for an hour of processor time, which is a lot of submitted jobs. You can sign up for free, and I think they have credit card transactions, so no, it's a bit more direct than all that.
I think D-Wave has also gone the way of providing it as a cloud product with their ‘Leap’ service.