The New Hybrid Cloud: Quantum Computing + Classical Computing?

(Forbes) The hybrid cloud’s mixing of private and public cloud services may include the integration of quantum computing and classical computing in the future.
John Koetsier, Senior Contributor interviews Alan Baratz, the president and CEO of D-Wave Systems here. These days you can’t buy D-Wave quantum computers. Instead, you rent quantum computing time in the company’s Leap cloud service, which competes with cloud quantum computer services from companies like IBM and Azure Quantum from Microsoft.
In this far-ranging discussion about quantum supremacy and an emerging quantum Moore’s Law, Baratz mentioned that D-Wave’s cloud quantum computing service is integrated with Amazon Web Services. “In our Leap cloud service, when you run the hybrid solver, we’re actually spinning up AWS CPU and GPU instances for the classical piece … and then submitting the quantum piece to our quantum processor back in Vancouver,” Baratz told me on a recent episode of the TechFirst podcast. “So we’re kind of doing it today.”
While talking about erosion in classical computing might be wildly optimistic at the moment, for D-Wave, the competitive advantage that quantum computing provides is in multiple verticals. One is biotech, including computation around complex problems like protein folding, an important step in developing vaccines.
For Baratz, then, the age of of quantum computers being useful for solving real business problems has already arrived. It’s here today. “With our systems, we are already making a significant positive impact on businesses,” he says, adding that D-Wave has customers who have been using its services for years.