By: Paolo Zialcita
October 23, 2019
Google says it has built a computer that is capable of solving problems that classical computers practically cannot. According to a report published in the scientific journal Nature, Google’s processor, Sycamore, performed a truly random-number generation in 200 seconds. That same task would take about 10,000 years for a state-of-the-art supercomputer to execute.
The achievement marks a major breakthrough in the technology world’s decadeslong quest to use quantum mechanics to solve computational problems. Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote that the company started exploring the possibility of quantum computing in 2006.
In classical computers, bits can store information as either a 0 or a 1 in binary notation. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which can be both 0 and 1. According to Google, the Sycamore processor uses 53 qubits, which allows for a drastic increase in speed compared with classical computers.