How It Works - UK (2020-02)

http://www.howitworksdaily.com

DID YOU KNOW? A 300-qubit computer would contain as many pieces of information as there are atoms in the universe

How It Works 023

G

oogle says it has accomplished ‘quantum

supremac y’. This is a fanc y way of saying

its Sycamore processor can do

something unique. It worked out a complex

maths problem in three minutes and 20 seconds.

The search-engine giant says a state-of-the-art

supercomputer would struggle to do it in under

10,000 years. This is because Sycamore isn’t just

an upgrade on existing technolog y... it’s a

completely different way of working.

Sycamore is a quantum computer, meaning

it’s supercharged by the strange behav iour of

particles. This advanced processing power could

help cure dementia or invent artificial

intelligence, so it’s no surprise other tech firms

are hard at work developing their own versions.

Even governments are investing billions into

their ow n research. In fact, the rivalr y bet ween

the United States and China has been called the

‘21st-centur y Space Race’.

While Sycamore is a giant leap for Google, it’s

only the first step for this tech revolution. The

underlying physics that make quantum

computing so extraordinar y also cause some of

its biggest challenges. A nd we haven’t solved

many of them yet.

Words by Jack Parsons

A new generation of

number-crunchers are

harnessing the power of

particles: how will these

super-fast computers

change our world?