Google's quantum supremacy is only a first taste of a computing revolution
Google's success at achieving quantum supremacy sounds like a momentous victory. But really, it's just the first step in making this radical new type of computing useful.
On Wednesday, Google published a scientific paper in the journal Nature detailing how its quantum computer vastly outpaced a conventional machine, an idea called quantum supremacy. Powered by a Google-designed quantum processor called Sycamore, it completed a task in 200 seconds that, by Google's estimate, would take 10,000 years on the world's fastest supercomputer.
The importance of the achievement can be as hard to understand as quantum computing itself, a field made possible by the mind-bending behavior of atomic-scale physics. But if you want a takeaway, here it is: Quantum computing is only beginning to show some of the promise researchers have hyped for decades. We're still several breakthroughs away from seeing the true potential fulfilled.
Don't get me wrong. Google's achievement, documented by 77 authors in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal, is notable. Quantum computing skeptics should recalibrate their pessimism. Quantum computing ideas that Google has worked on for 13 years, and that famed physicist Richard Feynman described in 1981, are moving into reality.
Quantum computers work by embracing the strange nature of particles at the atomic scale. Where classical computers store data as bits that are either a one or a zero, the quantum computing equivalent, called a qubit, can store information that's part one and part zero. Next, a quantum computer gangs multiple qubits together, dramatically increasing the number of possible states they can record. Last, processing those qubits lets researchers explore countless possible solutions to a problem simultaneously instead of evaluating them one at a time. It's lousy for adding two and two, but potentially great for some problems classical computers just can't cope with.
https://www.cnet.com/news/google-quantum-supremacy-only-first-taste-of-computing-revolution/?ftag=CAD1acfa04&bhid=24447454298893839703959737945916
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