[rfurlan]

D-Wave's computer is basically a hardware solver for Ising/QUBO models. It is not programable in the traditional sense and you need to find a way to express the problem you want to solve in a way that maps well over the hardware.

[rfurlan]

To clarify: you express your problem as an Ising model, load the model into the D-Wave One QC and it will solve it for you. The interesting thing is that solving Ising models is a NP-hard problem.

D-Wave's current chip has only 128 qubits and it is somewhat limited. As they scale it up (and they are prepared to do so) you will be able to use their computer to solve larger and larger models that could not be solved with standard silicon in a reasonable amount of time.

[da-bacon]

Indeed that is why many in quantum computing cringe at some of their PR. A minor nit: D-waves machine is programmable, it's just not (thought to be) universal.