Quantum supremacy officially confirmed

Kvantna nadvlada je končno potrjena. Ekipa z UT Austin je dokazala, da kvantni računalnik lahko reši nalogo z bistveno manj viri kot klasični. Njihov pristop ne temelji na domnevah, temveč na matematičnem dokazu, mejnik za prihodnost kvantne tehnologije.

If you spend an afternoon reading about quantum computing, you’ll quickly come across the term “quantum supremacy.” It’s about a quantum computer performing a calculation that a classical supercomputer cannot or would perform extremely slowly.

In 2019, Google claimed to have achieved supremacy, with its Sycamore computer completing the task in 3 minutes and 20 seconds, while a classical computer would have taken 10,000 years. But in 2024, a laboratory in Shanghai completed the same task in 14 seconds using a classical supercomputer.

Now, a team from the University of Texas at Austin has demonstrated the “unconditional decoupling” between quantum and classical computing. In a study published on arXiv, the researchers showed that a quantum computer with 12 qubits can solve a task that would require between 62 and 382 bits of memory for a classical computer.

The experiment was conducted between “Alice” and “Bob,” where Alice created a quantum state and Bob measured it. The quantum system optimized the process so that Bob could predict the state before Alice revealed it.

The researchers used ion qubits controlled by lasers. Their approach is not based on assumptions, but on the proven fact that classical algorithms cannot fill this gap.

Progress continues. Harvard scientists have presented a coherent quantum computer with 3,000 qubits and new methods for error correction in the journal Nature.