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Google Claims Quantum Supremacy But IBM Has It’s Doubts

Transformers may some day become science fact rather than fiction as news broke out earlier that computer technology may have taken a giant leap ahead.

Google is reporting that it has constructed a computer that is capable of solving problems that traditional computers practically cannot.

To demonstrate the device’s computational prowess, the scientists set it the deeply contrived task of checking the randomness of a sequence of numbers. What the quantum computer rattled through in three minutes and 20 seconds would keep the world’s most powerful supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee busy for 10,000 years, they claim.

The achievement marks a major breakthrough in the technology world’s decades long quest to use quantum mechanics to solve computational problems. Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote that the company started exploring the possibility of quantum computing in 2006.

With the current technology found in classical computers, bits can store information as either a 0 or a 1 in binary notation. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which can be both 0 and 1. Now Google is stating that its Sycamore processor uses 53 qubits, which allows for a drastic increase in speed compared with classical computers.

The report acknowledges that the processor’s practical applications are limited. Google says Sycamore can generate truly random numbers without utilizing pseudo-random formulas that classical computers use.

Pichai called the success of Sycamore the “hello world” moment of quantum computing.

“With this breakthrough we’re now one step closer to applying quantum computing to—for example—design more efficient batteries, create fertilizer using less energy, and figure out what molecules might make effective medicines,” Pichai wrote.

Google’s rival, IBM, was quick in bursting the bubble. IBM clains that Google has not achieved the highly prized goal of quantum supremacy.

IBM has pushed back, saying Google hasn’t achieved supremacy because “ideal simulation of the same task can be performed on a classical system in 2.5 days and with far greater fidelity.”

On its blog, IBM further discusses its objections to the term “quantum supremacy.” The authors write that the term is widely misinterpreted.

“First because, as we argue above, by its strictest definition the goal has not been met,” IBM’s blog says. “But more fundamentally, because quantum computers will never reign ‘supreme’ over classical computers, but will rather work in concert with them, since each have their unique strengths.”

“Google’s experiment is an excellent demonstration of the progress in superconducting-based quantum computing,” the IBM scientists argue. “But it should not be viewed as proof that quantum computers are ‘supreme’ over classical computers.”

The notion that quantum computers are better performers over classical computers has dated back to the early 1980s. In 2012, John Preskill, a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech, coined the term “quantum supremacy.”

Quantum computers can possibly tackle problems that are essentially too demanding for classical computers to handle. One area where scientists expect them to make an impact is in drug discovery. In the search for new medicines, pharmaceutical companies call on computers to trawl through the structures of scores of molecules to see which might bind to biological molecules and have some useful action in the body. Quantum computers should run these searches much faster by analysing whole libraries of molecules at a time and identifying the most promising drug candidates.

Several startups see quantum computers as a means to design radically new materials, including better batteries, by modelling the quantum behaviour of the subatomic particles inside them.

Another area where the processing capability of quantum computers could prove itself is weather forecasting. The science and art of forecasting have steadily improved with greater computing power, but quantum computers could mean a step change in accuracy. The problem with the weather is that it is so complex that in the time it takes a standard computer to produce an accurate forecast, the weather has already happened. (Move aside Geostorm!)

Inevitably, quantum computers will also be used for financial modelling, where a huge number of variables dictate the movements of markets.

Sundar Pichai, pictured with the Sycamore Quantum processor
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