All new Google quantum supremacy What it means
About a week back, Google researchers claimed to have reached quantum supremacy, according to an article in the Financial Times. NASA had briefly posted Google’s paper on its website before being removed. On the paper, researchers claim to have outperformed today’s most powerful classical supercomputer called Summit with their own quantum computer.
This is what you call quantum supremacy in other words, when a quantum computer is proven to be faster at a given task than a classical computer. As per the paper, Google’s 53 qubit Sycamore system is able to complete this specific calculation in three minutes and 20 seconds. Where as The Summit supercomputer would take around 10,000 years to complete the same function.
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Quantum supremacy was initially been predicted for the end of 2017. But, Google’s 72 qubit Bristlecone computer (pictured above) proved too hard to control with sufficient accuracy. Rather then, the breakthrough comes from the smaller 53 qubit Sycamore system.
What’s the use of quantum computers and what are they good for
Our traditional computers which operate on bits of either 1 or 0, quantum computers use qubits to store values. The qubit or quantum bit, is a two state quantum mechanical system. That has the mysterious property of being able to hold a superposition of both 1 and 0 states at once. But, this state collapses upon measurement.
We built our Quantum computers with similar hardware gates to classical computers, with NOT and AND gate equivalents used built to mathematical functions. But, quantum outputs are intrinsically probabilistic, meaning they must be checked for accuracy and error corrected. We can’t peek at a quantum computation part-way through without ruining the output, due to superposition.
The Superposition and probability are the keys that make quantum computers useful for certain mathematical tasks. Up Scaling the number of qubits makes it possible to compute millions of possibilities almost instantly. The use include factoring huge numbers, calculating Fourier Transforms, and solving linear equations. Quantum computers, by nature, are very specialised. Quantum computers aren’t any good for many of the basic computations our handheld computers perform every day.
Are quantum supremacy safe from hackers ?
Just like how strange quantum computers sound, it has some very interesting applications in certain areas of computing particularly those that involve repeated, complex mathematical operations such as meteorology, modeling chemistry and physics, and cryptography.
Quantum computers can do many mathematical permutation problems at once and, in theory, take a fraction of the time of current computers need to break common encryption standards. Just days or hours rather than multiple lifetimes. We can say that cryptographic protocols may one day be needed for very sensitive information to prevent cracking by quantum computers.
Quantum supremacy outperforms a classical computer for a given task
