Quantum Supremacy Survey: Has Google Achieved It?
Learn what the top quantum computing researchers in Europe and the US think.
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 recently 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 top quantum computing academic researchers and open source developers asking their views on Google’s milestone. The following results are from 150 researchers/developers based in Europe (~ 40%) and the USA (~ 60%), all of which took their time to reply, we’ll keep updating the results as more people take the survey.
Survey Q1: From your understanding of the quantum experiment carried out at Google, did they achieve quantum supremacy?
Survey Q2: Is Google's experiment an important milestone in quantum computing?
Survey Q3: How far are we from achieving quantum supremacy?
Survey Q4: Which of the following organizations will achieve quantum supremacy first?
Interview with John Preskill on Quantum Computing
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