The researchers at Google said on Wednesday that they had made significant progress in developing practical quantum computing. According to a new study, they succeeded in lowering the error rate, which had been holding down the much-touted technology.
The concept of quantum computing has been heralded as a game-changing innovation that will harness our ever-expanding knowledge of the subatomic realm to build a machine with capabilities far above those of today’s conventional computers.
Unfortunately, the technology is still in its theoretical stages. Numerous difficult obstacles exist to overcome, such as persistently high mistake rates.
The Google Quantum AI lab has outlined a technique that dramatically reduces error rates in new research published in Nature.
For a competition like IBM, which is also developing superconducting quantum processors, this might be a huge advantage for the US tech giant.
Quantum computers employ qubits, either a one or a 0, to process information. In contrast, classical computers use bits, which can only be one or the other.
Because of this characteristic, called superposition, a quantum computer may simultaneously calculate an extremely large number of outcomes.
These machines take advantage of some of the most mind-boggling features of quantum mechanics, such as the phenomena of entanglement, in which two members of a pair of bits can exist in a single state even if they are physically separated.
‘Magic’
Nevertheless, when qubits leave their quantum state and interact with the outside world, a condition known as decoherence can lead them to lose the information they are carrying.
High error rates are troubling scientists who want to run more complex experiments due to this fragility. These error rates rise as the number of qubits increases.
On the other hand, Google’s team claimed to have shown for the first time in practice that error-correcting code can identify and rectify faults without altering the data.
In the 1990s, the concept was initially put up as a theory. The study’s co-author, Google’s Hartmut Neven, noted that prior attempts had resulted in more errors rather than fewer.
But, as Neven stated at a press conference, “the magic of quantum error correction kicks in” if all system parts have low enough error rates.
Collaborator Julian Kelly called the breakthrough “a critical scientific milestone,” adding that “quantum error correction is the single most crucial technique for the future of quantum computing.”
Yet “not good enough,” Neven remarked; “we need to get to an incredibly low mistake rate.”
In addition, he said, “there are more steps to come” before the goal of a practical quantum computer is realized.
In 2019, Google announced that its Sycamore machine had completed a computation in 200 seconds that would have taken a traditional supercomputer 10,000 years to complete. If true, this feat is known as “quantum supremacy,” and it would be a significant technological advancement for Google.
Chinese experts said this year that a supercomputer might have beaten Sycamore’s time. Therefore the accomplishment has since been challenged.
