Google Claims Breakthrough in Quantum Computing
23 Outubro 2019 - 12:45PM
Dow Jones News
By Sara Castellanos
Alphabet Inc.'s Google said its quantum computer has performed a
calculation in about 3 minutes compared with the 10,000 years it
would have taken the world's fastest supercomputer to complete the
task.
The calculation involves a progressively difficult random
number-sampling task and the research was published Wednesday in
the science journal Nature.
The search giant claims to have achieved so-called quantum
supremacy, which Google defines as a programmable quantum computer
performing a task that is prohibitively hard for a regular
computer. The quantum processor collected one million samples of a
quantum circuit in approximately 200 seconds, which would have
taken a state-of-the-art supercomputer an estimated 10,000 years to
do.
Industry experts and competitors have defined that term
differently. International Business Machines Corp., for example,
argues that the term refers to the threshold where quantum
computers can perform calculations that classical computers
cannot.
IBM, which is working to commercialize its own quantum computer,
saw a version of the Nature paper prior to publication and
published a blog post earlier this week disagreeing with the
science behind Google's claim. The calculation could have been
solved with a classical machine in 2 1/2 days instead of 10,000
years, IBM said.
Experts say quantum computing can be orders of magnitude more
powerful than traditional computers.
By harnessing the properties of quantum physics, quantum
computers have the potential to sort through a vast number of
possibilities in nearly real time and come up with a probable
solution. While traditional computers store information as either
0s or 1s, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which
represent and store information as both zeros and ones
simultaneously.
Google's quantum computer is a 54-qubit processor named
Sycamore.
Experts say quantum computing can be applied across industries,
including pharmaceuticals, finance and transportation. Companies
including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Volkswagen AG have been
experimenting with early versions of quantum computers.
Google's demonstration of quantum computing's processing power
comes as competitors such as Microsoft Corp. and IBM, and venture
capital-backed startups, are working to commercialize the
technology using various methods.
President Trump's administration has made quantum computing a
priority and authorized the spending of $1.2 billion over five
years for quantum-related activities across the federal
government.
Google's quantum researchers have been working for years to
solve two major technical problems to commercialize quantum
computing. One is that qubits can't yet maintain their quantum
mechanical state for more than a fraction of a second, in part
because they are delicate and easily disrupted by changes in
temperature, noise or frequency.
Another challenge is that current quantum-computing systems
don't have fault tolerance like traditional computers, meaning if
the delicate qubits are disturbed they can't resume or continue
running the program they were handling.
Write to Sara Castellanos at sara.castellanos@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 23, 2019 11:30 ET (15:30 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
International Business M... (NYSE:IBM)
Gráfico Histórico do Ativo
De Mar 2024 até Abr 2024
International Business M... (NYSE:IBM)
Gráfico Histórico do Ativo
De Abr 2023 até Abr 2024