Google has made a groundbreaking development in the field of quantum computing, its quantum processor, Willow, and its algorithm have reached what the company refers to as “quantum advantage”.
it can accomplish a calculation that was well beyond the capabilities of the classical supercomputers.
This accomplishment is a significant breakthrough in computing, science, and technology.
The Groundbreaking in Simplistic Words
In practice, quantum advantage means that a quantum computer solving a use case problem is much faster than any other computer, and not that quantum computers are faster at an artificial benchmark.
According to Google, Willow, executing its new algorithm, took thousands of years on the fastest classical platforms today or thousands of minutes on the quantum device.
But the problem was an application along the lines of molecular simulation and not a general purpose workload.
The qubits are quantum bits that can be in more than one state in a superposition and which can be interconnected in an entangled manner and processed through the processor.
It enables quantum machines to search through a large number of solutions concurrently, which cannot be provided by bits in classical computers.
Also, a major advance in quantum hardware, according to research done by Google, is that Google has advanced significantly in error suppression and correction.
Why it is important: First, quantum machines are not merely mechanisms to enjoy in a laboratory they can be successfully tested to be superior to classical systems in certain situations.
Second, despite the fact that the resolved problem remains limited and specialized, it has now become easier to follow through and apply it to real life problems in areas like material science, chemistry, supply chain optimization, and advanced artificial intelligence training.
The Google team also notes that software and hardware are still developing and are not yet ready to be used by typical commercial applications.
It is still years before the technology can be developed to build a large scale, fault tolerant quantum computer, the type to be used in full-scale drug discovery or in cracking cryptography.
However, this will become a turning point, the time when quantum computing ceases to be in theory and becomes a real possibility.
Concerning the users and industries, it is warning them to be quantum future ready now, particularly in the field of cybersecurity, as quantum machines are capable of pounding through classical encryption engines later in AI,.
Special data generation with quantum models can possibly accelerate learning more quickly and in research, mouse, climatic structures, and physical structures can be simulated with quantum speedy methods.
In brief, it is not only the announcement of a company chip of Google but also the next horizon of computing.
Although a quantum device will not be able to loot the everyday laptop or smartphone this time around, the concepts of quantum are now being paved.
There is no simple method to determine the future of quantum hardware and software scaling, because more significant future uses include the adaptation of industries and the handling of risks and rewards by society as a whole.
Thus, the critical questions in the future will be how quickly the hardware is scaled and the software follows, how industries are accommodated, and how society addresses the risks and benefits of possibly an entirely new kind of computing.
