Age-old problem
Age-old problem – A cartoon that illustrates the challenges of getting to a point when quantum computing, like any new technology, can change from a science project to something of practical use.
The term ‘quantum supremacy’ refers to the threshold where quantum computers outperform classical computers (i.e. the ones we all use today) in tasks that would be practically impossible for classical machines due to the sheer amount of time or resources required.
Some of the primary issues to achieve this is that qubits are “noisy,” meaning they are highly prone to interference from their environment, such as changes in temperature, which leads to high error rate. Google recently claimed supremacy with just 53 qubits, performing a calculation in 200 seconds that the company estimated would take the world’s most powerful supercomputer 10,000 years.
Despite IBM refuting this definition of “supremacy,” both appear to be getting to the point where parallelized quantum processors with classical communication can bring about the first step of “quantum advantage” compared to classical computing. Early signs demonstrate the benefits of this in a diverse number of industries, for example pharmaceuticals, where quantum has already illustrated a 70% reduction in drug discovery costs, and finance, where quantum has helped propel portfolio returns by 10%.
At the same time, we need to be aware of the limits of quantum’s practical value, Neil Thompson from MIT Sloan notes, “quantum computing is not going to be better for everything, just for somethings.” For that reason, they often need to be cooled to near absolute zero, but even then they can still fall into “decoherence” midway through calculations, something American presidential candidates can relate to as well.
