Google's Quantum Supremacy Peer Survey (update)
Find out what quantum researchers & developers think about Google's claim on quantum supremacy.
Back in 2012, John Preskill, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, invented the phrase “quantum supremacy” to describe the moment when a quantum computer finally surpasses the world’s best classical supercomputer. Although the term generated excitement among the applied quantum computing research community, there wasn’t really a general consensus on what the minimum condition should be in terms of outperforming a classical supercomputer for “quantum supremacy” to be achieved.
So when Google announced it had achieved the milestone using their “Sycamore” machine — IBM immediately challenged Google by releasing a statement stating that the quantum supremacy threshold has not yet been crossed! In a paper posted online, IBM provided arguments that the world’s most powerful supercomputer can nearly keep pace with Google’s new quantum machine. As a result, IBM argued that Google’s claim should be received “with a large dose of skepticism.”
Google vs IBM - Who Is Right?
With the collaboration of our parent company Zaiku Group, we sent out a survey to quantum computing academic researchers and open source quantum developers under the condition of anonymity asking their views on Google’s experimental quantum milestone. The following results are from 600 researchers/developers based in Europe and the US, all of which took their time to reply, we’ll keep updating the results every once in a while as more people take the survey.
Question 1: From your understand of the quantum experiment carried out at Google, did they achieve quantum supremacy?
Yes (8%) | No (75%) | Partially Achieved (10%) | Undecided (7%).
Question 2: Is Google's experiment an important milestone in quantum computing?
Yes (53%) | No (6%) | Maybe (41%).
Question 3 (your prediction): If your answer to Google’s quantum supremacy claim is negative, how far are we from achieving quantum supremacy with scientific consensus?
Within 5 - 10 years (33%) | Within 10 - 15 years (48%) | Within 15 - 20 years (19%).
If you have any questions or feedback about our quantum survey, please feel free to share your thoughts with our team:
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