Google Quantum Processor Reportedly Achieves Quantum Supremacy
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https://gizmodo.com/google-says-its-achieved-quantum-supremacy-a-world-fir-1838299829
The Financial Times reports that they saw a Google publication claiming that the company's quantum processor can perform a calculation "in three minutes and 20 seconds that would take today's most advanced classical computer, known as Summit, approximately 10,000 years"-a demonstration of quantum supremacy. Google has not yet responded to a Gizmodo request for comment, and it has long been cagey about when and how it'd make the announcement.
We don't have many details as to what calculation the computer performed. But previous proposals essentially involve the quantum computer racing classical computer simulating a random quantum circuit. The achievement would not be a surprise-we've long known that Google has been testing a 72-qubit device called Bristlecone with which it hoped to achieve quantum supremacy. Financial Times reports that the supremacy experiment was instead performed with a 53-qubit processor codenamed Sycamore.
This would be a major early milestone when it comes to comparing these quantum devices against classical computers. But we're a long way off before quantum computers actually demonstrate quantum usefulness. That would require increasing the coherence time and introducing error correction schemes" those where multiple qubits are combined into one in order to ensure that the quantum computer outputs the answers it's supposed to output.
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