Google unveils quantum computer breakthrough
ALPHABET Inc’s Google said it had achieved a breakthrough in computing research by using a quantum computer to solve in minutes a complex problem that would take today’s most powerful supercomputer thousands of years to crack.
Google researchers expect that quantum computers within a few years will fuel advancements in fields such as artificial intelligence, materials science, and chemistry. The company is racing rivals including IBM Corp and Microsoft Corp to be the first to commercialise the technology and sell it through its cloud computing business.
“We’re hoping that when people start using this and looking at performance stability and cloud interface, they’ll get really excited about what we have to offer at Google,” John Martinis, the company’s chief scientist for quantum hardware, told reporters.
The breakthrough was described in a paper published in science journal Nature. It followed weeks of controversy since a draft leaked over whether
Google’s claim of “quantum supremacy” was valid.
IBM said a supercomputer employing a different set-up could solve the same challenge in under three days, while chipmaker Intel said “quantum practicality” remained years away.
Google defended its position, but did not dispute rivals’ contentions. It has manufactured a handful of chips with 54 ‘qubits’, vastly more powerful than the standard 64-bit chip in many consumer devices.
However, for the technology to be useful to customers it would need to make chips with thousands of qubits.
Martinis said Google sees “a pathway” to a computer with 1,000 qubits and expressed confidence that it had a reliable process to make its new chip, dubbed Sycamore.
The US and Chinese governments have led in the burgeoning quantum technology field, pledging billions of dollars in funding to corporate and state researchers to fast-track quantum development and mitigate possible issues, including the tech’s expected ability to break digital encryption.
Google has been among the beneficiaries of the American support. “The United States has taken a great leap forward in quantum computing,” said US chief technology officer Michael Kratsios on Wednesday.
For decades, computer scientists have sought to harness quantum physics, laws governing the behaviour of particles that are smaller than atoms and can simultaneously exist in different states.
Quantum bits, or qubits, can be set to one and zero at the same time, unlike today’s computer bits that are either ones or zeros. This superposition property multiplies exponentially as qubits become entangled with each other, meaning the more qubits connected, the vastly more powerful a quantum computer becomes.
But there is a catch: Quantum researchers need to cool qubits to about absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius or -460 degrees Fahrenheit) to limit vibration — or “noise” — that causes errors in calculations. It is in this challenging task that Google, which has designed much of its own electronics and used liquid helium for cooling, has made significant progress.