Trending Science: Computer blazes trail in quantum computing

It has been a dream for several decades to build and use a robust, error-free device known as a quantum computer that can vastly outperform any computer of its time. It would bring overwhelming new processing power to our world.

According to a study published in the journal ‘Nature’, a team of scientists and researchers employed a Google machine known as Sycamore to execute a calculation that would take 10 000 years on a classical supercomputer, but only 200 seconds on theirs. “Our experiment achieves quantum supremacy, a milestone on the path to full-scale quantum computing,” they claim in the paper.

Quantum leap

“We’re hoping that when people start using this and looking at performance stability and cloud interface, they’ll get really excited about what we have to offer at Google,” John Martinis, the company’s chief scientist for quantum hardware, told ‘Reuters’. “We’re pretty confident we’ll all stay safe and secure in the future.” U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios added: “The United States has taken a great leap forward in quantum computing.”

Today’s fastest computers perform tasks using fragments of data known as bits that are only ever either 1 or 0. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, that can be both 1 and 0 at the same time. This is where the mind-boggling processing speeds come from.

The team designed a quantum processer made up of 54 qubits and used it to carry out a task related to random-number generation. Within 200 seconds, the Sycamore sampled and verified the accuracy of the solutions. This procedure is 1.5 trillion times faster than that of a normal machine.

Are new-gen machines ready to leave old-school supercomputers far behind?

Is Google overselling its achievement? IBM believes the Google hype machine has gone into overdrive. Through its official blog, IBM said that Google risks misleading the public, and that it had overestimated the computing task’s difficulty. IBM maintained the problem could be solved by a regular computer in just 2.5 days instead of 10 000 years. “[W]e urge the community to treat claims that, for the first time, a quantum computer did something that a classical computer cannot with a large dose of skepticism.” The post continued: “[Q]uantum computers will never reign ‘supreme’ over classical computers, but will rather work in concert with them, since each have their unique strengths.”

Nevertheless, the authors aren’t resting on their long-sought technological milestone of “quantum supremacy”. They recognise the need for improved hardware and more advanced monitoring methods to really harness the power of quantum.

“As a result of these developments, quantum computing is transitioning from a research topic to a technology that unlocks new computational capabilities,” the authors conclude in the paper. “We are only one creative algorithm away from valuable near-term applications.”