Google researchers have made a fresh claim of quantum advantage — the ability of quantum computers to radically speed up calculations compared with their classical counterparts.
This is not the company’s first such claim. But the researchers say their latest algorithm — dubbed quantum echoes — has the potential to solve scientific problems, including deriving the structures of molecules. It could also, in theory, be replicated on another quantum computer.
“This algorithm offers the opportunity for real-world applications,” said Hartmut Neven, who heads Google’s quantum-computing lab, in Santa Barbara, California, at a briefing for journalists ahead of the announcement. The firm is optimistic that in five years there will be practical uses for quantum computers, he added.
ut some researchers are cautious of the claim of quantum advantage, published in Nature on 22 October1. “The burden of proof should be high,” says Dries Sels, a quantum physicist at New York University in New York City. And although the paper does a “serious job” of testing various classical algorithms, there is no proof that an efficient one doesn’t exist. “Personally I don’t think that’s enough to make such a big claim,” he says.
Others say that the promise of practical use so soon is premature. The technical advance is impressive, says James Whitfield, a quantum physicist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, but it is “a bit of a stretch to think how this is going to suddenly solve some economically viable problem”.
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