More Than Just Hype, What Does Quantum Supremacy Mean, Practically?
What Is Quantum Supremacy? And Why Does It Matter?
+ The concept of quantum systems was first proposed by a Russian mathematician, Yuri Manin, in 1980. However, it was Richard Feynman who conceived the possibility of quantum computers in the early 1980s.
+ Feynmann proposed that quantum computers would be effective in solving problems of chemistry and physics. Today’s computers use binary logic to perform tasks, but if we utilize the rules of quantum mechanics, many complex computational tasks will become feasible.
+ In 2012, an American theoretical physicist, John Preskill, coined the term “quantum supremacy” to describe a system far advanced than classical computers. It heralds the era of noisy intermediate-scale quantum technologies.
Out of the blue, by the end of 2019, Google researchers announced that they had achieved quantum supremacy. They developed a 54-qubit processor named Sycamore that performed the target computation (a random sampling calculation) in 200 seconds.
+ What Exactly Is Quantum Supremacy? Quantum Supremacy is the goal of building a quantum computing system that can solve a problem that no classical computer can solve in a reasonable amount of time.
+ How will we tell for sure that quantum supremacy has been achieved? Verifying quantum supremacy is one of the trickiest tasks. It’s not like a nuclear explosion or a rocket launch, where you just watch and instantly know whether it succeeded.
+ You have to accurately demonstrate two things to verify quantum supremacy:
+ (1) The quantum device performs calculations fast.
+ (2) No classical computer could efficiently perform the same calculation.
Source: RankRed. Varun Kumar, What Is Quantum Supremacy? And Why Does It Matter?…
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