April 26, 2017 at 13:21Already this year: Google plans to create a quantum computer
By the end of this year, the Google team, led by the professor of physics from the University of California, John Martinis (John Martinis) plans to develop a quantum chip that can "outperform" existing computers in computing speed. As a proof, the team is ready to hold a “speed competition” between its invention and one of the world's supercomputers. / Flickr / Dano / CC
Google has already published a report on the use of the chip with 9 qubits arranged in a linear fashion. The latest chip released by the Internet giant consists of only 6 qubits, but they are grouped in three. At the same time, according to Martinis, the team’s goal is to create an array of 49 qubits to conduct a successful experiment.
Such a number of them will make it possible to achieve the so-called quantum superiority , when no classical computer can equal the quantum power. John Martinis has led the Google research team, which has been working on the creation of super-powerful computer chips using quantum physics to process data, since 2014.
At that time, there was already a D-Wave computer in the world, which was also acquired by Google. However, such a system cannot be considered a full-fledged quantum computer; in fact, it is only a quantum annealing facility. Greg Tallant, head of Lockheed Martin's Quantum Computing Center, saysthat the system solves problems based on the Ising model and can be used for a limited number of tasks. In 2014, D-Wave had 512 qubits, which were not interconnected, and Martinis at that time managed to connect 5 qubits.
But not all scientists consider the idea of quantum superiority worthy of attention. For example, physicist Robert Schoelkopf of Yale is convinced that in this context, the problem of error correction is much more important. The fact is that qubits as the basic units of quantum information are extremely susceptible to external influences, and this leads to errors in the work.
However, Google worked on a solution to this problem.back in 2015, and quite successfully. Scientists have developed a quantum error correction code that measures the quantum state of a qubit entangled with neighboring qubits. This allows you to maintain its original state. At the same time, scientists found that with an increase in the number of qubits, error correction will only get better.
The Google team is confident that they have every chance to conduct an experiment with quantum superiority this year. And although quantum computers in the future will have to have a much larger number of qubits than 49, this will be an important step towards creating a full-fledged quantum computing system.
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Such a number of them will make it possible to achieve the so-called quantum superiority , when no classical computer can equal the quantum power. John Martinis has led the Google research team, which has been working on the creation of super-powerful computer chips using quantum physics to process data, since 2014.
At that time, there was already a D-Wave computer in the world, which was also acquired by Google. However, such a system cannot be considered a full-fledged quantum computer; in fact, it is only a quantum annealing facility. Greg Tallant, head of Lockheed Martin's Quantum Computing Center, saysthat the system solves problems based on the Ising model and can be used for a limited number of tasks. In 2014, D-Wave had 512 qubits, which were not interconnected, and Martinis at that time managed to connect 5 qubits.
But not all scientists consider the idea of quantum superiority worthy of attention. For example, physicist Robert Schoelkopf of Yale is convinced that in this context, the problem of error correction is much more important. The fact is that qubits as the basic units of quantum information are extremely susceptible to external influences, and this leads to errors in the work.
However, Google worked on a solution to this problem.back in 2015, and quite successfully. Scientists have developed a quantum error correction code that measures the quantum state of a qubit entangled with neighboring qubits. This allows you to maintain its original state. At the same time, scientists found that with an increase in the number of qubits, error correction will only get better.
The Google team is confident that they have every chance to conduct an experiment with quantum superiority this year. And although quantum computers in the future will have to have a much larger number of qubits than 49, this will be an important step towards creating a full-fledged quantum computing system.
Other materials from our blog: