There was a rumor going around that Google is working on its quantum supremacy paper and the news was also leaked regarding Google’s new initiative. After almost a month of this incident, today, Google finally published its official paper on “quantum hegemony” in the scientific journal ‘Nature”. With this, Google has achieved a huge milestone in the world of computing technology.
Google’s official announcement was made public today and we got bits of information on some of Google’s major achievements. According to Google, its 54-bit Sycamore processor can complete the random number calculations required by the world’s most powerful supercomputer in 20,000 years in 200 seconds.
We all know that ‘quantum computers’ are far more powerful than the computers used by scientists today. Quantum computers can help us to solve complex scientific calculations much quicker than before. In terms of this, Google’s’ quantum hegemony’ can be counted as a huge achievement because it dwarfs all current non-quantum computers.
The paper discusses the quantum supremacy thoroughly:
This dramatic increase in speed compared to all known classical algorithms is an experimental realization of quantum supremacy for this specific computational task, heralding a much-anticipated computing paradigm. As a result of these developments, quantum computing is transitioning from a research topic to a technology that unlocks new computational capabilities. We are only one creative algorithm away from valuable near-term applications.
Although the research conducted by Google can’t be applied in our technology immediately. But, it is true that Google has successfully applied the quantum computing method for the very first time in history and we can hope for more practical applications in the near future.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has sincerely congratulated the Google AI team via Twitter and said:
“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”
However, the supercomputer company IBM has shown doubts about Google’s latest achievement and criticized that the same task could be completed in just 2.5 days rather than the 10,000 years as Google claimed. The IBM blog post states:
“A headline that includes some variation of “Quantum Supremacy Achieved” is almost irresistible to print, but it will inevitably mislead the general public. First because, as we argue above, by its strictest definition the goal has not been met. 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”.
However, Google’s new quantum computing research is welcomed by researchers all over the world and has been praised by various authorities. Distance quantum theory and it’s application are still new to the world and we still need time to merge it properly with our technologies. But, we hope that we will soon be able to get a hold of quantum computing properly by overcoming the possible difficulties.
