Lockheed Martin bought a quantum computer from Canadian company D-Wave Systems two years ago and having upgraded are now “confident enough” in the technology to to make it part of its business, reports the New York Times.
Microsoft, IBM and Hewlett-Packard have all been developing quantum computers which are special because they move away from traditional computer code.
Quantum computing has its critics and many believe it has not been proving to be efficient when implemented, but if successful it does have the potential to solve business and science problems millions of times faster than currently be done.
Ray Johnson, chief technical officer at Lockheed Martin, said: “This is a revolution not unlike the early days of computing. It is a transformation in the way computers are thought about.”
Johnson added quantum computing would be used by his company to create and test complex radar, space and aircraft systems.
Other possibilities for the quantum computer are in shifting through vast amounts of genetic data in the fight against cancer and to determine the behaviour of proteins in the human genome.
