Researchers at the company could unveil a quantum computer that is superior to conventional computers by the end of next year. Researchers at Google may unveil a truly powerful quantum computer by the end of next year.
While Google itself remains tight-lipped on timings, New Scientist reports
that many researchers in the field reckon its team isn’t far from
completing perhaps the most advanced quantum device the world has seen.
“It’s Google’s to lose,” Simon Devitt, from the Riken Center for
Emergent Matter Science in Japan, told the magazine.
The new report confirms what we reported last year after visiting Google’s hardware lab. Google plans to
demonstrate a quantum chip that, using an assembly like this, can solve
problems beyond what any ordinary computer is capable of.
It’s no secret that Google is striving to build a quantum computer
that can outperform conventional computers—a concept known as quantum
supremacy. Having tested—with no small amount of controversy—D-Wave’s
quantum computers, the company hired acclaimed physicist John Martinis
in 2014 to build its own quantum chips. More recently, it published
results which suggested that a powerful quantum computer might be easier to build than was previously thought.
Several
scientists familiar with Google’s progress, including Devitt, suggest
that a functioning 50-qubit quantum chip, enough to overpower
conventional supercomputers at a certain kind of calculation, could be
ready by as soon as the end of 2017.
Demonstrating quantum
supremacy would mark an inflection point in the history of computing
technology. The first machines would be unlikely to be of much practical
use, but they would almost certainly trigger a huge amount of
investment in developing quantum computers that could blow away today’s
supercomputers in almost every type of calculation imaginable.
(Read more: New Scientist, “Google’s Quantum Dream Machine,” “Google Reports Progress on a Shortcut to Quantum Supremacy”)
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