For all that claim that Google made comparing it to the historic feat of sending the first rocket into space, the announcement was not received happily by some. The race to space was one of the biggest bum fights between the Russians and Americans back in the days. It was strategic and military importance to both the nations as well. The quantum computer is also about to change history due to its unprecedented computing power.
The Race to the Future
Google was ecstatic that it had won the race to achieving supremacy in quantum computing and unveiling that its quantum computer can do tasks in mere minutes that would take the most powerful supercomputer in the world more than 10,000 years. When Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai made this announcement, the claim was immediately sparked by controversy and dismissal of the claim. The tech rival was none other than IBM.
In a swift dismissal and public statement, IBM asserted and assured that Google has not achieved, yet, the goal of??quantum supremacy??which is the highly prized objective for anyone in this era. This is what they have to tell.
When Google published its claim in Nature on Wednesday, soon after an earlier report that appeared on NASA’s website, John Martinis is said to have to lead the whole expedition to the future of computing. As the leader of the research team, they successfully build a superconducting quantum processor, called the Sycamore. They were able to harness and capture the weirdness of the quantum bits and physics to build the first quantum computer to solve real-world problems.
The Problem ?Quantum Supremacy? Solved
To check and verify the capabilities the quantum computer was programmed to compute the randomness of a sequence of numbers and what they found was a miracle. What the quantum computer calculated in a matter of 3 minutes and 20 seconds would take any standard supercomputer of today at least 10,000 years to compute. Currently, the most powerful supercomputer is in Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee.
In the journal, the authors state that the experiment that was performed can only be done by a quantum computer and thus they achieved the so-called ?supremacy? which they were set forth.
However, IBM did not take that happily. In a blog post released recently, they argue that Oak Ridge supercomputer can solve the task in 2.5 days, and depending on how it was programmed. Also, adding that a quantum computer is set to solve problems that are beyond a classical computer’s capabilities, the claim of Google does not hold up.
Progress Not Proof
Thus, according to IBM, Google has shown and demonstrated excellent progress in the field of superconducting computation, but it cannot be held as proof of quantum computing yet. Since quantum computer computes with ?Qubits? anything between 0 to 1 as opposed to computers with 0 and 1, the comparison is not that straightforward. Google’s Sycamore used 53 Qubits to turn out the results, but far from John Preskill’s definition of supremacy.