Google’s Quantum Supremacy is Really Superior?
Google’s scientist achieved “quantum supremacy” for the first time in this world. They made 53-bit quantum computer called Sycamore, which solve an incredibly problem within 200 seconds. There would take 10,000 years to solve that problem through the current world’s fastest supercomputer.
Before going to discuss, first knows What is SuperComputer/Quantum? How is it working?
A quantum computer is a type of computer that uses quantum mechanics to solve the problems in the fastest than a regular computer.
For a more understandable manner, we know how regular computer is working?
Regular computers use bits — a stream of electrical or optical pulses, which represent 1s or 0s. Today’s whatever we are using from Whatsapp, e-mails & google to your youtube videos is a long string of the binary digits.
On the other side, Quantum computers use qubits, which are typically subatomic particles such as electrons or photons. Managing & generating qubits is a scientific and engineering challenge. Some big giant company like Google, IBM is using quantum computing technology.
Qubits have quantum properties which connected a group of them can provide way more processing power than the same number of binary bits. One of those properties is known as superposition and another is called entanglement.
What is quantum supremacy?
It’s the stages, where a quantum computer can complete a mathematical calculation that reaches beyond the conclusive, even the most powerful supercomputer.
On Wednesday Google published in the journal Nature, it’s claimed the “Quantum Supremacy Using a Programmable Superconducting Processor”. Google’s research team working on quantum supremacy, finally they developed a new 54-qubit processor, named called “Sycamore”. As perform the benchmark testing, it’s comprised of fast, high-fidelity quantum logic gates. it’s solving an incredible problem within 200 seconds. There would take 10,000 years to solve that problem through the current world’s fastest supercomputer.
Researcher's response to Google’s Quantum Supremacy?
The IBM researcher argues. “But it should not be viewed as proof that quantum computers are ‘supreme’ over classical computers.” saying that a traditional supercomputer could solve the problem in 2.5 days, not 10,000 years. Still, 200 seconds is a lot quicker than 2.5 days. If the quantum computer isn’t supreme, it’s still extremely impressive because it’s so small and so efficient. “They got one little chip in the quantum computer and the supercomputer is covering a basketball court,” Preskill says.
Christopher Monroe, a physicist at the University of Maryland and co-founder of the quantum computing startup IonQ, said Google’s paper might be a milestone in quantum computing, but it was an academic one. “The problem is not likely to be useful for anything, except showing something that appears to be really hard using normal computers,” he said.
Physicist Michel Dyakonov at the Université Montpellier in France remains unconvinced quantum machines will become mainstream. “I don’t believe they will ever become practical,” he said. “The quest for ‘supremacy’ is somewhat artificial and belongs more to the hype than to science. Just show us an elementary quantum calculator that can do three times five or three plus five.”
Steve Brierley, CEO of the Cambridge-based quantum software company Riverlane, said: “It’s clearly an amazing achievement. I think this is going to be one of those moments when people look back and say, ‘That was the time that really changed this field of quantum computing.’ It is also a great moment in time to stop talking about quantum supremacy, which has unfortunate historical connotations, and moves on to talking about quantum advantage, which has a useful application.”
Google’s person responded to IBM’s Denial.
As per Forbes post, Google for a response to IBM’s denial. A Google spokesperson replied with something that’s a little less than a direct response:
“With Sycamore we’ve demonstrated that we’re now in the NISQ era, performing on real hardware a computation that’s prohibitively hard for even the world’s fastest supercomputer, with more double exponential growth to come. We’ve already peeled away from classical computers, onto a totally different trajectory.”
“We welcome proposals to advance simulation techniques, though it’s crucial to test them on an actual supercomputer, as we have. More importantly, we welcome ideas from the research community on new applications that work only on NISQ-era processors like Sycamore and its successors. We’ve published our circuits so the whole community can explore this new space. We’re excited by what’s possible now that we have this unique new resource.”
MIT TR Interviews with Sundar Pichai on achieving Quantum Supremacy.
Based on MIT TechnologyReview post on the interview’s from Sundar Pichai for Quantum Supremacy achieved.
MIT TR: You got a quantum computer to perform a very narrow, specific task. What will it take to get to a wider demonstration of quantum supremacy?
Sundar Pichai: “You would need to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer with more qubits so that you can generalize it better, execute it for longer periods of time, and hence be able to run more complex algorithms. But you know, if in any field you have a breakthrough, you start somewhere. To borrow an analogy — the Wright brothers. The first plane flew only for 12 seconds, and so there is no practical application of that. But it showed the possibility that a plane could fly.”
IBM also says the term “quantum supremacy” is misleading, because it implies that quantum computers will eventually do everything better than classical computers, when in fact they will probably always have to work together on different bits of a problem. They’re accusing you of overhyping this.
My answer on that would be, it is a technical term of art. People in the community understand exactly what the milestone means.
Can you talk about the difference in approach between Google and IBM? For one thing, IBM has a bunch of quantum machines that it puts in the cloud for people to program, whereas you’re doing it as an in-house research project.
It’s great that IBM is providing it as a cloud facility and attracting other developers. I think we as a team have been focused on making sure we prove to ourselves and to the community that you can cross this important milestone of quantum supremacy.
Finally, I conclude today post, research continues going on to finding the best Quantum Supremacy stage in the field of Quantum Computing.
Resources: TechnologyReview, GoogleAIblog, TheGuardian, Forbes
