After the space conquest in the 1950s, a new technological and scientific race is underway: the one towards the quantum supremacy. After leaks in September, Google engineers and researchers at the University of Santa Barbara said they reached this milestone by performing a calculation with a quantum processor in just over three minutes (200 seconds) that would have taken 10,000 years to the most powerful of the current supercomputers. But his big American competitor, IBM, relativizes the announcement, saying that the calculation can be done in three days with a traditional computer. The White House, it has already blew champagne, very happy ahead of China, which invests massive resources in quantum computing.
What is quantum supremacy?
A reminder for all of us mortals, quantum computing is based on the principle of superposition. Instead of using bits that can only take two values (0 and 1), quantum processors use qubits that, at the microscopic scale and under extreme cold conditions, have an infinity of possible states (such as the Schrödinger cat both dead and alive). "It is a parallelism that allows for multiple calculations at once," summarizes Jean-Paul Delahaye, researcher in computer science. "Quantum supremacy" is a concept that dates back to the 1980s. This is the point at which quantum computers will be able to solve problems that would take too much time for traditional computers, thanks to a sufficient number of qubits.
Has Google reached this milestone?
Google responds in the affirmative, because according to its measurements, its processor Sycomore, which counts 54 qubits, realized 300 seconds a calculation which would have taken 10,000 years at most powerful supercomputers current. But IBM does not agree, saying that by coupling large amounts of storage and RAM, the calculation would take only 2.5 days, not 10,000 years. Until experts decide, it should be noted that the calculation chosen by Google, which is linked to a generation of random numbers, can not be generalized to other tasks such as the factorization of large numbers. We are far from a universal quantum computer capable of performing various calculations. In an editorial, Nature specifies that it will probably be one or more decades before quantum computers have an impact on our daily lives.
What will it serve?
Google, for its part, compares its breakthrough to the Wright brothers' first powered flight in 1903, which lasted only 12 seconds. It is, in short, a proof of concept. What will be its practical applications? According to Google, quantum computing could advance artificial intelligence at high speed. Advances in molecular modeling are already paving the way for new materials to design more efficient batteries, or catalysts that reduce carbon emissions during fertilizer manufacturing. Quantum computers could also disrupt cryptography and render obsolete our credit cards, which rely on the RSA algorithm to secure transactions. To counter this threat, research in resistant cryptography has already taken the lead. "It is even more advanced than the quantum computer," says physicist Daniel Hennequin.
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