[JulianMorrison]

D-Wave's machines are very different from "regular" quantum computers, and the sort of problems they solve faster than conventional computers are travelling salesman problems and those closely related, eg: "how can I lay out this printed circuit board so the traces don't cross and are as short as possible?"

[jessriedel]

D-wave's device has been used to solve exactly zero problems faster than a classical computer. Whether the current prototype even harnesses an actual quantum speed-up hasn't been shown.

[asafira]

For the record, this is also true for every quantum computer in existence. What is clear though, is that quantum computers have already solved problems in fewer steps than classical computers.

And to be fair, it's going to take a while to beat current computers. We've had decades to get them faster and faster, and we will need some time because we can perform low level operations nearly as fast and get enough qubits to get to sizes of problems that classical computers have issues with

[jessriedel]

> For the record, this is also true for every quantum computer in existence.

Yes, I'm well aware. The difference from D-wave is that the labs at IBM, UCSB, and Yale haven't claimed they've built a quantum computer (mostly).

> What is clear though, is that quantum computers have already solved problems in fewer steps than classical computers.

This is statement is false and probably not even interpretable in a sensible way. See, for instance, my esteemed colleagues on why some labs' claims to have factored small numbers like 15 are bogus:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.7007

> And to be fair, it's going to take a while to beat current computers. We've had decades to get them faster and faster, and we will need some time because we can perform low level operations nearly as fast and get enough qubits to get to sizes of problems that classical computers have issues with

Although it will take a while, it will probably not be because classical computers are so great. I could be wrong (I'm no expert and there could always be scaling surprises), but I'm willing to bet it takes us longer until we perform the first quantum computation that can't be done by hand than between that time and the time when we perform a computation that can't be done with a classical computer.

The short version is that you're mistaken about how research in quantum computers has been progressing. There have been fantastic successes and advances, but they cannot be measured by "number of qubits" or "difficulty of computations done". There simply haven't been any real computation performed. You should think of researchers at the stage of still trying to get the first transistor to work, not the Moore's-law stage of trying to cram the 2^Nth transistor into the silicon.