The professor who coined the phrase 'quantum supremacy' gives his opinion on Google's announcement

Record ID: 1438564

  • Title: The professor who coined the phrase 'quantum supremacy' gives his opinion on Google's announcement
  • Date: 24th October 2019
  • Summary: PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (OCTOBER 23, 2019) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF PROFESSOR JOHN PRESKILL (SOUNDBITE) (English) CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY THEORETICAL PHYSICIST, PROFESSOR JOHN PRESKILL, SAYING: "Well people have been trying for some years to develop the hardware for a quantum computer which would process information in a very different way from the digital computers that we use today. It's been very challenging to develop this hardware and by quantum supremacy we mean a quantum computer that does something that can't be matched by the most powerful computers that we have today or at least would be very hard to do with the most powerful super-computers." VARIOUS OF PRESKILL TALKING (SOUNDBITE) (English) CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY THEORETICAL PHYSICIST, PROFESSOR JOHN PRESKILL, SAYING: "If you just say quantum supremacy has been achieved, that can be very misleading because it doesn't mean you can throw your ordinary computer away because quantum computers are now supreme. What it means is that we've kind of opened the door to real applications of quantum technology and now we're going to have to play around with these quantum computers and get a better understanding of what the important applications are going to be. I can't really promise you that they are going to be applications which are going to impact ordinary people in five years or 10 years. It's an exploration. I view it as a frontier of science."
  • Embargoed: 7th November 2019 03:21
  • Keywords: Caltech quantum computer Preskill professor John Google Sundar Pichai California Institute of Technology quantum supremacy
  • Location: SANTA BARBARA / PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES; ZURICH, SWITZERLAND
  • City: SANTA BARBARA / PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES; ZURICH, SWITZERLAND
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Information Technologies / Computer Sciences,Science
  • Reuters ID: LVA002B2GIB0N
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Alphabet Inc's Google said on Wednesday (October 23) it had achieved a breakthrough in computing research by using a quantum computer to solve in minutes a complex problem that would take today's most powerful supercomputer thousands of years to crack.
    The company said it had achieved "quantum supremacy", a term invented by Professor John Preskill, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology.
    In an exclusive video interview with Reuters, Preskill explained what "quantum supremacy" was, saying "People have been trying for some years to develop the hardware for a quantum computer that would process information in a very different way from the digital computers that we use today. It's been very challenging to develop this hardware and by quantum supremacy we mean a quantum computer that does something that can't be matched by the most powerful computers that we have today or at least would be very hard to do with the most powerful super-computers."
    He added "If you just say quantum supremacy has been achieved, that can be very misleading because it doesn't mean you can throw your ordinary computer away because quantum computers are now supreme. What it means is that we've opened the door for real applications of quantum technology and now we're going to have to play around with these quantum computers and get a better understanding of what the important applications are going to be. I can't really promise you that they are going to be applications that are going to impact ordinary people in five years or 10 years. It's an exploration. I view it as a frontier of science."
    For decades, computer scientists have sought to harness quantum physics, laws governing the behavior of particles that are smaller than atoms and can simultaneously exist in different states.
    Quantum bits, or qubits, can be set to one and zero at the same time, unlike today's computer bits that are either ones or zeros. This superposition property multiplies exponentially as qubits become entangled with each other, meaning the more qubits connected, the vastly more powerful a quantum computer becomes.
    While the peer-reviewed research has drawn plaudits, skeptics say Google is over-selling its achievement.
    IBM said a supercomputer with additional disk storage can solve the random number problem Google's quantum computer solved in at most 2-1/2 days and with greater accuracy.
    Asked his own thoughts on IBM's claims, Gaskill said "When Google said it would take thousands of years for a super-computer to recreate what they had done with a quantum computer, that might not have been an accurate estimate but I think the main point that the Google group is making is still reasonable. They're saying that as quantum computers get more complicated, the task of simulating them and doing the same thing with a digital computer grows explosively. It rapidly becomes too difficult."
    Now that "quantum supremacy" has reportedly been achieved, what does this mean for technology in the future?
    Gaskill said "I think there will be substantial impact on our everyday lives eventually but that could be a ways off. The applications that we currently envision which could have a really big potential impact are improved ways of using computers to simulate chemistry and materials that might make us find new catalysts that could do things like fix nitrogen more efficiently or new pharmaceuticals or new ways of capturing solar power or things like that. But those applications require a lot more quantum computing power than we've seen so far."
    (Production: Rollo Ross)
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