Chinese researchers hail Google’s quantum computing breakthrough, call for more funds to catch up to US
- Chinese researchers working on 50-bit quantum computing technology are expected to achieve ‘quantum superiority’ by the end of next year
- While Google and Chinese scientists celebrated the breakthrough, American rivals including IBM and Intel cast doubt over the claims
Chinese scientists have applauded Google’s claim of a breakthrough in quantum computing despite doubts from its American rivals, calling for continuous investment so they do not fall further behind the US in a field that promises to render supercomputers obsolete.
Sycamore, Google’s 53-bit quantum computer, performed a calculation in 200 seconds that would take the world’s fastest supercomputer, the IBM Summit, 10,000 years to perform, according to a blog post by Google that was also published in Nature magazine last Wednesday. With Sycamore, Google claims to have reached quantum supremacy, the point where a quantum computer can perform calculations that surpass anything the most advanced supercomputers today can do.
Guoping Guo, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China and founder and chief scientist of Chinese start-up Origin Quantum, said the achievement was of “epoch-making significance”.
“Quantum supremacy is the turning point that has proven the superiority of quantum computers over classical computers,” said Guo. “If we fall behind in the next stage of general-purpose quantum computing, it would mean the difference between cold weapons and firearms.”
Quantum computers, which take a new approach to processing information, are theoretically capable of making calculations that are orders of magnitude faster than what the world’s most powerful supercomputers can do.