Quantum Computing Is Real, and D-Wave Just Open-Sourced It (Wired)

Wired covers the release of Qbsolv as open-source software (under the Apache License v2) by D-Wave, which is a company that makes quantum computing hardware. Qbsolv is "designed to help developers program D-Wave machines without needing a background in quantum physics". Further:Qbsolv joins a small but growing pool of tools for would-be quantum computer programmers. Last year Scott Pakin of Los Alamos National Laboratory-and one of Qbsolv's first users-released another free tool called Qmasm, which also eases the burden of writing code for D-Wave machines by freeing developers from having to worry about addressing the underlying hardware. The goal, Ewald says, is to kickstart a quantum computing software tools ecosystem and foster a community of developers working on quantum computing problems. In recent years, open source software has been the best way to build communities of both independent developers and big corporate contributors.

Of course to actually run the software you create with these tools, you'll need access to one of the very few existing D-Wave machines. In the meantime, you can download a D-Wave simulator that will let you test the software on your own computer. Obviously this won't be the same as running it on a piece of hardware that uses real quantum particles, but it's a start.