Google claims quantum computer performed 10,000-yrs task in just 200 seconds

However, IBM researchers Edwin Pednault, John Gunnels and Jay Gambetta argued that the term “quantum supremacy” is being broadly misinterpreted and causing ever-growing amounts of confusion.

Search giant Google has marked a major milestone in quantum computing research, thus opening up new possibilities for the futuristic technology. The results of the quantum supremacy experiment were published in the scientific journal Nature.

According to Google, its fully programmable 54-qubit Sycamore processor successfully performed a computation in just 200 seconds that would take the world's fastest classical supercomputer approximately 10,000 years to accomplish the equivalent task.

"We are able to achieve these enormous speeds only because of the quality of control we have over the qubits. Quantum computers are prone to errors, yet our experiment showed the ability to perform a computation with few enough errors at a large enough scale to outperform a classical computer," the tech giant wrote in a blog post.

Image Courtesy: Google

The Sycamore Processor comprises a two-dimensional square grid where each qubit is tunably coupled with four other immediate qubits. This arrangement ensures the chip has enough connectivity so that the qubit states quickly interact throughout the entire processor, making the overall state impossible to emulate efficiently with a classical computer, Google explained in its AI blog.

The chip design was further optimized to lower crosstalk and improve performance by developing new control calibrations that avoid qubit defects.

Image Courtesy: Nature

"This moment represents a distinct milestone in our effort to harness the principles of quantum mechanics to solve computational problems. I am excited about what quantum computing means for the future of Google and the world. Part of that optimism comes from the nature of the technology itself. You can trace the progress from the mega-computers of the 1950s to the advances we're making in artificial intelligence today to help people in their everyday lives," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post.

With this breakthrough, Google is eager to move ahead and has two main objectives for the near future:

• To make supremacy-class processors available to collaborators and academic researchers and finding its valuable applications
• Invest in its research team and technology to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer as quickly as possible

However, IBM researchers Edwin Pednault, John Gunnels and Jay Gambetta argued that the term "quantum supremacy" is being broadly misinterpreted and causing ever-growing amounts of confusion.

"We argue that an ideal simulation of the same task can be performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity. This is, in fact, a conservative, worst-case estimate, and we expect that with additional refinements the classical cost of the simulation can be further reduced," the researchers wrote in a blog post.