A recent study has confirmed that we have already reached the era of quantum supremacy. It is now capable of rectifying all the problems that your regular old computer cannot even handle. A study done by an author and a researcher in Google AI quantum “Brooks Foxen” has found that a task that would take around thousands of years to get accomplished by a regular computer will be done by a quantum computer in less than 200 seconds.
Foxen also concluded that the simulation time i.e. 10,000 years will be decreased by the major improvements done in the algorithm as well as the hardware. He also added that the progress is 1.5 trillion times faster and it can be definitely considered as an achievement.
Power of quantum computers
The main reason for such a great performance is that they store the information in the form of subatomic particles. They have a tendency to exist as a superposition of two or more states in the same frame of time.
In a nutshell, we can conclude that the unbeatable power of quantum computers is because of the phenomenon of superposition. They have the capability of storing and manipulating a lot of information beyond the limits of a regular computing system.
A regular computer stores the information in the form f 0s and 1s whereas quantum computers make use of quantum bits for the same.
The competition between Sycamore and Summit
The recent study led the researchers to get a glimpse of the ultimate power of the quantum computers which was initiated by Frank Arute (Google AI quantum) who made use of a quantum computer named Sycamore. This quantum computer has a total of 54 qubits out of which one is in a non-working state.
The scientists at the ORN made those 53 qubits to become tangled by providing it a task to generate random numbers. Then they made a comparison of the same for summit supercomputer.
A physician named “William Oliver” at MIT stated that the summit is the best supercomputer so far which is capable of performing over 200 billion operations in just a second. This was also published in a publication named news and views.
Another researcher named Oliver added up to the statement of William Oliver that the summit hardly has 40,000 units of processing and also stated that 99% of the resources were used in-sample performance. The resource includes specifications such as the 250 million GB storage and transistors in the figure of billions.
Foxen observed that the sycamore was able to finish the work in about 3 minutes and the work done by the summit is a perfect reference to prove that the traditional supercomputers and were considered to be the most powerful of their time, would approximately take around 10000 years for the same task.
A great head start for the future of computing
This exhibition of the superpowers of supercomputers against the regular old algorithms on some of the fastest supercomputers is no doubt a noticeable achievement and a step ahead for the field of quantum computing. This was said by Oliver in the demonstration. He also added that this experiment on quantum computers is a clear model of the computing that has a bold line of difference from regular computers. Furthermore, it gives an answer to the questions that are put up on the ability of control and the feasibility of quantum computers in a very large and non-ordinary space of computing.
As a matter of fact, there is still a lot of work that is required to be done before making quantum computers, an important aspect of our day to day lives. Researchers are required to develop a number of different and unique algorithms that are expected to be working with the error-free processors of quantum computers which are expected to be available in the future. Also, scientists are required t develop a lot of protocols that would be required to fix the current errors before making this technology available for use by the general public as well as the businesses.
Conclusion
With all the references and the facts that we stated above, it is a cakewalk to conclude that quantum computing is the need of the hour for future businesses.
