Conclusion
My conversation with Dave Snelling was very insightful, and there were several takeaways from it. The primary takeaway is how digital annealers can smoothen the entry for quantum computers and annealers in a few years' time. This transition is interesting from both a technical capability perspective and a commercial viability angle.
The other key point that I would like to stress is David's focus on the so what of technology. Gate-based computers, so what? Quantum supremacy, so what? And the list goes on. This is an important lesson for technologists: it is very important to identify a problem to solve, and then deploy technological resources towards the solution. I often find technologists creating solutions that are looking for problems, and that is never a good place to innovate from.
It is pretty evident that Dave is enthusiastic about the possibilities of quantum computers. We discussed use cases across several industries in this chapter. However...