[reikonomusha]

You can’t just buy the machine like any other COTS product. You typically need a team of PhD scientists to operate it as well.

I think D-Wave has also gone the way of providing it as a cloud product with their ‘Leap’ service.

[boothby]

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.

[reikonomusha]

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?

[boothby]

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.

[discordance]

otherwise known as PhDaaS

[api]

You needed a bunch of Ph.Ds to operate early digital computers too. You didn’t just unbox one of those and start doing stuff.

This is probably the 1930s of quantum computing.

[boothby]

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?

* I don't, so I read a Wikipedia article or two

[inasio]

Also available, I think, on Amazon Bracket (and perhaps on Azure Quantum as well)