[rfurlan]

You are correct, their QC is more of a hardware solver for a very specific problem than a general purpose computer. On scaling, I was a D-Wave a few weeks ago, they seem to be prepared to scale-up the chip aggressively in 2012.

[da-bacon]

I think one has to be careful about the engineering challenge of scaling (which I think D-wave has heroically succeeded at so far) versus the question of whether the adiabatic algorithms in their system (finite temperature, imperfections, etc) will scale. I think they can pull of the first challenge (again, an amazing accomplishment), but the second is a question of whether the physics and computer science of their device will scale. I think the good news is that they will probably be able to answer this question in the next few years (thanks to the purchase of one of their devices my Lockheed Martin), but I do worry the answer they get won't be the one they are hoping for.