Data Science
A quick glance into google’s recently leaked paper about Quantum Computing on NASA’s website
Image — Google
Quantum Computer and qubits have been around for a while and there have been many discussions and surprisingly many concerns as well, regarding its applications. Nasa and Google have been working collaboratively on a Quantum Computing project and there were hints earlier this year that Google is on the verge of cracking Quantum Supremacy. A few weeks back in September, a leaked paper from Google was posted on NASA’s website and taken down immediately. But the internet being the internet, copies of the paper resurfaced again and since then there is a lot of discussion going on.
The paper was titled Quantum Supremacy using a Programmable Superconducting Processor. According to Google’s claim, for the first time, a 53 qubit quantum computer used quantum properties to surpass a classical machine at a specific task thereby achieving Quantum Supremacy. But it has not been published in any scientific journal and experts are yet to validate google’s claims but as per a quote from the paper which reads-
“To our knowledge, this experiment marks the first computation that can only be performed on a quantum processor.”
The quantum computer was competing with a super powerful classical computer to simulate the outputs of a pseudo-random quantum circuit, in other words, a number generator.
Unsurprisingly the quantum computer won the race hands down, but the magnitude of how fast it produced the output compared to its rival may be a little shocking. Producing 1M random numbers on the quantum processor takes a mere 200 seconds in comparison to 10,000 years that a classical supercomputer would take. Afterall 10,000 years from now none of us would be left to verify the samples which would take millions of years more.
Even though all these claims are yet to be established, what all the experts agree upon alike is the fact that Quantum computers are far from ready for commercial use. Quoting John Preskill who coined the term Quantum supremacy back in 2011-
“ The problem their machine solved with astounding speed was carefully chosen just for the purpose of demonstrating the quantum computer’s superiority. ”
But a Quantum Computer that has at least 1500 logical qubits may be able to solve mathematical problems that Bitcoin, cryptography, and encryption that make up the trusted digital communication and ledgers on the internet. The current quantum computer used by google popularly known as Sycamore uses only 53 physical qubits, which was developed after the 72 physical qubit computer turned out too difficult to control. Scaling quantum computers is no easy task, the more qubits you add the more unstable the system becomes.
At least for now, it is safe to assume that data decryption is still many years away since it would require 1000s of qubits. So yeah you can keep buying cryptocurrencies and hope to make money as long as Google doesn’t come up with a miracle and shock us in the near future.
Image- Unsplash
Let’s also not undermine what google has achieved here. Scientists have been working on cracking this for years now. And it is worth noting that Google is not the only player here. Companies like IBM, Intel, Microsoft have been working towards achieving Quantum supremacy for quite some time now. IBM had unveiled a 20-qubit quantum computer that was designed for commercial use but never really got ready for it. So if google’s work checks out it will be a milestone worth celebrating in this fierce battle to achieve Supremacy.
Meanwhile, you can read excerpts from the original leaked paper here.
Update- Google has released an official video today ( 23rd Oct 2019) titled “Demonstrating Quantum Supremacy”.