Lockheed Martin Corporation, US's biggest military contractor, has signed an agreement to purchase a quantum computing system from D-Wave Systems Inc., a report on the company website said.

Both the companies have decided to collaborate on a computing platform which will be based on quantum annealing processor to deal with Lockheed Martin's most complex problems. The multi-year contract will come with the system, associated professional services and maintenance.

D-Wave is thrilled to establish a strategic relationship with Lockheed Martin Corporation, said Vern Brownell, D-Wave's President and Chief Executive Officer, in a report. Our combined strength will provide capacity for innovation needed to tackle important unresolved computational problems of today and tomorrow. Our relationship will allow us to significantly advance the potential of quantum computing.

D-Wave's systems involve physics of quantum mechanics and solve problems such as financial risk analysis, affinity mapping and sentiment analysis, object recognition in images, software verification and validation, compressed sensing and bioinformatics.

D-Wave was first featured in May in the British scientific journal Nature, where its research on quantum annealing was published.

About D-Wave:

The world's first commercial quantum computer has been released by D-Wave systems, a quantum computing company, based in Burnaby, British Columbia, a report in Digit magazine said.

The company reportedly undertook 12 years of research and registered more than 50 patents and filed 100 more.

Labeled 'D-Wave One', the system is a high performing computing system which has been designed to encounter industrial complexities which are often faced by Fortune 500 companies, academic institutions and governments.

The current superconducting 128-qubit (quantum bit) processor chip is placed in a cryogenic system inside a 10-sq. meter protected space whose chief task is distinct optimization. The system costs about $10 million.

The processor, Rainier, employs quantum annealing, a process which allows the user to mould and distort the quantum particle energy levels greater than any other system, to solve complex problems.

The process enables the formation of integrated circuits which have similar operating style as that of conventional silicon. The processor can be programmed using a python programming language.

D-Wave has established a process that allows a quick method called 'snapshotting' which eventually becomes like the frame of a movie. Watching the result, the system can finally examine inside the quantum black box and see whether the quantum computing can deliver the accurate mathematically-provable results.