Posted: Nov 06, 2018 10:36 pm
newolder wrote:This is what we want to see...Google has enlisted NASA to help it prove quantum supremacy within months
The firm will pit its Bristlecone quantum processor against a classical supercomputer early next year and see which comes out on top.
by Mark Harris November 5, 2018
Quantum supremacy is the idea, so far undemonstrated, that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer will be able to complete certain mathematical calculations that classical supercomputers cannot. Proving it would be a big deal because it could kick-start a market for devices that might one day crack previously unbreakable codes, boost AI, improve weather forecasts, or model molecular interactions and financial systems in exquisite detail.
The agreement, signed in July, calls on NASA to “analyze results from quantum circuits run on Google quantum processors, and ... provide comparisons with classical simulation to both support Google in validating its hardware and establish a baseline for quantum supremacy.”
Google confirmed to MIT Technology Review that the agreement covered its latest 72-qubit quantum chip, called Bristlecone. Where classical computers store information in binary bits that definitely represent either 1 or 0, quantum computers use qubits that exist in an undefined state between 1 and 0. For some problems, using qubits should quickly provide solutions that could take classical computers much longer to compute.
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More @ technonlogyreview link
I don't see that that makes any sense. We will only know that quantum machines are faster than classical machines for some classes of problems once the complexity theorists have proven that BQP > P, where > means 'strictly includes'.
Doing it by just running 'the fastest known' algorithms proves nothing except predictable things about the fastest known algorithms.