The most amazing thing to come out of Canadian design this year, the D-Wave One processor uses quantum effects to solve complex optimization problems, and does it faster than current digital processors (think Intel). In other words, the future of high speed computing is Canadian. Unlike digital bits that encode data as either a 1 or a 0, the quantum processors crunches qubits, and encodes both numbers at the same time. This property, along with the ability of quantum states to cancel or reinforce each other, is what allow quantum processors to perform calculations much faster than traditional processors. It’s hoped that quantum processors will be able to tackle big data problems like stock portfolio optimization, image recognition and classification and rooting out bugs in complex software.