Google's Quantum Supremacy And What does it mean for the Future of Computing

Physicists have been talking about the power of quantum computing for over 30 years, but the questions have always been: will it ever do something useful, and is it worth investing in . Google researchers have now officially announced that they have achieved “quantum supremacy” — in other words, their quantum computer managed to complete a computational task faster than a conventional supercomputer processor. The race between the quantum and traditional computer wasn’t even close: according to the document published by Google , their “Sycamore” superconducting processor, which sports 54 qubits, quickly solved a problem that would’ve taken a classical computer 10,000 years to solve. Welcome to The Atlantis Report. Rumors have been circulating for weeks that tech megacorporation Google has achieved quantum supremacy, meaning it’s used an experimental quantum computer to perform a calculation significantly faster than a regular binary computer. In a mysterious paper spotted by the Financial Times on NASA’s Technical Reports Server in September, Google researchers claimed to have beaten a supercomputer by a wide margin. But the paper was quickly deleted, prompting much debate about the claim’s validity. Google now officially announced that its 54-qubit Sycamore processor was able to perform a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken the world’s most powerful supercomputer 10,000 years. That would mean the calculation, which involved generated random numbers, is essentially impossible on a traditional, non-quantum computer. This is Game Over Classical Computers. The tech megacorporation is clearly very proud of its achievement. Google CEO Sundar Pichai even compared it to when the Wright brothers took off on their first plane ride in 1903 in an interview with MIT Technology Review. Google’s biggest quantum computing competitor, IBM, is griping. In a post published on Monday, IBM argued Google’s showcase didn’t “account for plentiful disk storage” and other optimization methods. Therefore, “Google’s experiment is an excellent demonstration of the progress in superconducting-based quantum computing,” IBM researchers wrote, but it shouldn’t “be viewed as proof that quantum computers are ‘supreme’ over classical computers.” So What the heck is a quantum computer? Before we discuss what a quantum computer is, it’s helpful to think about what a traditional computer is. Classical computers are built around transistors that, by holding or vacating a charge, signifies either a one or a 0. By linking these transistors together into more complex formations, they can represent data, or transform and combine it through logic gates like AND and NOR. With a complex language specific to digital computers that have evolved for decades, we can make them do all kinds of interesting things. Quantum computers are actually quite similar in that they have a base unit that they perform logic on to perform various tasks. The difference is that the unit is more complex: a qubit, which represents a much more complex mathematical space than simply 0 or 1. Instead, you may think of their state may be thought of as a location on a sphere, a point in 3D space. The logic is also more complicated, but still relatively basic (and helpfully still called gates): That point can be adjusted, flipped, and so on. Yet the qubit, when observed, is also digital, providing what amounts to either a 0 or 1 value. By virtue of representing a value in a richer mathematical space, these qubits and manipulations thereof can perform new and interesting tasks, including some which, as Google shows, we had no ability to do before. Quantum computers, on the other hand, are not built upon using the flow of electricity. They rely instead on the physical properties of electrons, photons, and other tiny bits of matter that are subject to the laws of quantum mechanics. These bits of matter can do a lot more than just be turned on and off. Actually, on and off aren’t really words that make sense in quantum physics. This kind of tiny matter is best described in states called amplitudes (like waves, since the tiniest bits of matter can act as both particles and waves). A particle can have two different amplitudes at the same time — a state called superposition. They can also be entangled, meaning a change in one particle instantly changes another. The amplitudes of particles can also cancel one another out like opposing waves in water would. Also, the smallest particles in Nature don’t really exist at a point in space, but they exist as a probability of existing. Scientists hope quantum computers may lead to better, quicker ways to solve optimization problems. When you have many different choices in front of you, how do you choose the ideal path? These types of questions strain traditional computers but could, potentially, be a breeze for quantum computers, which could sort through all the possible parts at once. A traditional computer has to try out each path one at a time. Though, “we’re not going to be able to run applications like that for a while because the hardware just isn’t advanced enough as Quantum computers are hard to build. Google’s paper on Quantum Computing published in the journal, Nature, is well written. The description of Google’s efforts illustrates tremendous results that exhibit how fast complex problems can be attained in a fraction of a second compared to many years. Google has exemplified its supremacy over and above IBM. Google and its brilliant engineers should be recognized with the top prestigious science and technology award, such as the Albert Einstein Award, Nobel Prize in Physics, and the National Medal of Science. Google engineers have made a great contribution to science and technology! We are standing on the Quantum “Event Horizon,” and the experiment conducted reveals to us much that we do not know. In 50 years, quantum computing may let us take various economic data, input it, and it will spew out results so fast, we can tweak ideas until we get the best case scenario…in terms of tax rates, retirement ages, minimum wage, what the price of milk should be, etc. All the way to one day telling us what the best mix of energy sources would be in each area to change the climate or how to decrease pollutants in our air, water, and food supplies to minimize cancer rates while maintaining other standards of living.












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