It is a quantum annealer, which is a less capable sub-category of quantum computer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_annealing

Technically there are a number of architectures that qualify to be called Quantum Computers- you're probably just from the camp that does not admit the D-wave design as being one. Not all quantum requires require entanglement.

I'm also of the camp that does not consider “throwing confetti” to be anti-gravity, “dousing cancer cells in gasoline and lighting it on fire” to be cancer-treatment, and “swinging a laser-pointer between two stars” to be ftl-communication.

I like to troll and call our silicon base chips "quantum computers" because they work via a very quantum process, that is, the photovoltaic effect.

They are not of course, and hopefully the smart people here can clarify what mechanically a "quantum computer" is doing, the best I can figure out is that it can reduce the complex valued quantum state down to a binary state and due to quantum interaction you can compute some things with this. If you asked me, it sounds like massive parallel computation on the atomic level, that is, similar to the way soap bubbles can solve minimal surfaces, but people keep assuring me this is not the case.

Did you mean the photoelectric effect? I think transistors really exploit our understanding of conduction and valence bands of electrons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_band_structure, how to move electrons to the conduction bands, and then bias them so a large current can flow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-effect_transistor#Effect...). IIRC part of the nobel for the transistor was because they (Shockley) had built a theoretical model based on QM

There's no (visible) photons involved in silicon computers, although very similar solid state and vacuum tube devices are used to exploit the photoelectric effect, mainly for scientific measurement purposes.

Yes, fixed