If you spend an afternoon reading about quantum computing, you\u2019ll quickly come across the term \u201cquantum supremacy.\u201d It\u2019s 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 \u201cunconditional decoupling\u201d 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 \u201cAlice\u201d and \u201cBob,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n