Quantum leap in computing as Google claims 'supremacy'

Scientists claimed on Wednesday to have achieved a near-mythical state of computing in which a new generation of machine vastly outperforms world's fastest supercomputer, kwn as "quantum supremacy". A team of experts working on Google's Sycamore machine said ir quantum system h executed a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken a classic computer 10,000 years to complete. A rival team at IBM has alrey expressed scepticism about ir claim.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai hails result

But if verified and harnessed, Google device could make even world's most powerful supercomputers capable of performing thousands of trillions of calculations per second looks like an early 2000s flip-phone. Regular computers, even fastest, function in binary fashion: y carry out tasks using tiny fragments of data kwn as bits that are only ever eir 1 or 0. But fragments of data on a quantum computer, kwn as qubits, can be both 1 and 0 at same time. This property, kwn as superposition, means a quantum computer, me up of several qubits, can crunch an ermous number of potential outcomes simultaneously.

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computer harnesses some of most mind-boggling aspects of quantum mechanics, including a phemen kwn as "entanglement" -- in which two members of a pair of bits can exist in a single state, even if far apart. ding extra qubits, refore, les to an exponential boost in processing power. In a study published in Nature, international team designed Sycamore quantum processer, me up of 54 qubits interconnected in a lattice pattern. y used machine to perform a task related to random-number generation, identifying patterns amid seemingly random spools of figures. Sycamore, just a few millimetres across, solved task within 200 seconds, a process that on a regular machine would take 10,000 years -- several hundreds of millions of times faster, in or words.

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Google's CEO Sundar Pichai hailed result as a sea change in computing. "For those of us working in science and techlogy, it's 'hello world' moment we've been waiting for -- most meaningful milestone to date in quest to make quantum computing a reality," he wrote in a blog post. "This demonstration of quantum supremacy over today's leing classical algorithms on world's leing supercomputers is truly a remarkable achievement," William Oliver, a computer researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Techlogy, wrote in a comment piece on discovery. quest for quantum supremacy is still far from over, however. authors mselves ackwledge need for better hardware and more sophisticated monitoring techniques in order to truly harness power of quantum. Some immediate applications of quantum computing could be in encryption software and AI, but its calculations could eventually le to more efficient solar panels, drug design and even quicker and better financial transactions. Wednesday's anuncement was t without controversy. After a leaked draft of Google lab's paper appeared online last month, chip-maker IBM, which runs its own quantum computing programme, said boasts of Sycamore computer's feats were exaggerated.

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Inste of 10,000 years for an ordinary supercomputer to match Sycamore's performance, IBM scientists in a blog post claimed it would be more like two-and-a-half years using most sophisticated tritional processors. "Because original meaning of term 'quantum supremacy'... was to describe point where quantum computers can do things that classical computers can't, this threshold has t been met," y wrote.

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