MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA — New research by Google has shown that its Sycamore quantum processor was able to perform a target computation in 200 seconds.<br /><br />In a blogpost, Google explained that the same experiment would take the world's fastest supercomputer approximately 10,000 years to produce a similar result.<br /><br />Classical computers process data as individual bits, with each bit labelled 1 or a 0.<br /><br />Quantum computers use qubits. Each qubit is capable of storing 1 and 0 at the same time. This is known as superposition.<br /><br />Qubits are also able to bind to one another and work together in a process called entanglement. This allows the quantum computer to simultaneously calculate various solutions to one single problem at the same time.<br /><br />For the experiment, Google developed a 54-qubit computing chip called "Sycamore" for its quantum computer, though only 53 were used because one qubit was inoperable.<br /><br />Sycamore is comprised of a two-dimensional grid in which each qubit is attached to four other qubits.<br /><br />The quantum computer was able to sample around one million random strings of numbers in approximately three minutes, according to the study.<br /><br />According to Google's blog post, the company plans to make the Sycamore processor available for academic researchers, collaborators and companies interested in developing algorithms for the technology.
