Google's "quantum supremacy" was questioned by Alibaba's new quantum research, Google refuted it like this

Google's newly announced Bristlecone chip might be enough to get its quantum computing researchers planning a party, but new work from Chinese rival Alibaba might put that off. The race between Chinese and American companies over a cutting-edge physical frontier shows how countries and companies are increasingly competing to create a new kind of unimaginably powerful computer.

Modern computers represent data using bits of "1" or "0", called classical bits. Quantum computers use subtle quantum mechanical effects to represent bits of data "0" and "1", and qubits emerge from this, but quantum mechanical effects puzzled Einstein and other physicists in the early 20th century. In addition, quantum mechanical effects can only be detected at extremely low temperatures and in extremely small ranges, which allows qubits to achieve a superposition state, that is, effectively representing "1" and "0" at the same time, allowing quantum computers to take shortcuts when performing complex calculations. There is evidence that quantum computing can help with chemical simulations, and Google and others believe that machine learning can also be improved.

In March this year, Google launched a chip called Bristlecone, which aims to become a milestone in quantum computing. Google said that Bristlecone is the first quantum computing system with computing power that exceeds any traditional computer, which will become a sign of "quantum supremacy", which refers to the quantum computing device surpassing the most powerful traditional computer in realizing a certain application. John Martinis, the leader of the research team, also said that it may achieve "quantum supremacy" this year, updating the previous prediction of achieving quantum supremacy in 2017.

Google's Bristlecone chip has 72 qubits made from superconducting circuits, making it the largest quantum chip to date, surpassing IBM's 50 qubits and Intel's 49. Google researchers calculated that this was enough to run a carefully chosen demonstration problem at a speed that could outperform any conventional computer, achieving quantum supremacy.

Google has been working on quantum computing since 2006, initially using hardware from Canada’s D-Wave, and in 2014 it hired a dozen people from a research team at the University of California, Santa Barbara, including its leader, John Martinis, to build its own quantum hardware lab.

But Google's recent talk of achieving quantum supremacy has irked some others in the field, who say that establishing the milestone as a defining moment can overstate how far quantum computers have come. Intel CTO Mike Mayberry told WIRED this week that he sees the technology as a 10-year project. IBM says it could be "mainstream" in five years.

Alibaba's results cast doubt on Google's optimism that it will achieve quantum supremacy in 2018. Alibaba researchers used a fleet of powerful servers to simulate the operation of Google's new chip and challenge the U.S. company's published plans. The results are a reminder that existing computer architectures are not yet fully capable of performance, and suggest that Google's planned demonstration with its quantum chip will not outperform conventional computers. "Many people hoped that this processor would achieve quantum supremacy, but our results suggest that this expectation may be overly optimistic," said Shi Yaoyun, director of Alibaba's quantum lab. He said Alibaba achieved the result by designing a better way to divide the task of simulating quantum computing operations among many computers working together.

Alibaba's results prompted a string of "wows" from Graeme Smith, a professor at the University of Colorado. Smith told WIRED that Google's Bristlecone appears to be the most capable quantum chip, but Alibaba's results suggest that the chip's error rate is still too high. "This suggests we're not going to see them achieve quantum supremacy any time soon," he said.

New results from Alibaba quantum researchers show that Google's Bristlecone project cannot achieve quantum supremacy. They believe that chips with lower error rates are needed. In an email, Google researcher Sergio Boixo told WIRED that he welcomes such research, but there are many "questions" about the results of this paper. Others think they are noteworthy. "The rules of the game have begun to change." said Itay Hen, a professor at the University of Southern California.

Google's Boixo also countered that Alibaba's simulation methods were not detailed enough to be conclusive. Better simulation methods, such as Alibaba's research, are also the reason why Google has been working on new ways to test quantum supremacy, which Boixo said should not require large-scale hardware upgrades. "This in turn will stimulate researchers to try to squeeze more performance out of classical computers," said Hen of the University of Southern California. "I'm sure the rules of the game will change."

Achieving quantum supremacy would be a scientific breakthrough, not proof that quantum computers are ready for scale, but it would help Google gain a foothold in a fierce competition among rivals such as IBM, Intel and Microsoft that want to lease or sell quantum computers to companies such as Daimler and JPMorgan Chase, which are exploring how the machines can improve battery and cost models.

According to Leifeng.com, IBM developed a quantum computer with 5 qubits in 2016 and provided it as a quantum computing cloud service for researchers. In November 2017, IBM announced the release of a new 20-qubit quantum computer. IBM also said that their researchers have successfully developed a 50-qubit prototype. In the past, it was believed that a quantum computer with 50 qubits could simulate all the operations of a traditional computer.

Microsoft announced in 2016 that it plans to invest huge resources in developing a prototype of a quantum computer. In the early morning of March 29, 2018, Microsoft announced that it had found evidence of the existence of Majorana fermions. The next step will be to convert fermions into quantum particles, and it hopes to achieve this goal by the end of this year and provide usable quantum computers to other companies within five years.

Perhaps the biggest bet on quantum computing comes from Intel, which announced in 2015 that it would invest $50 million in QuTech, a quantum technology research project at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Intel focuses on silicon quantum dot technology, which is often referred to as artificial atoms.

Alibaba has risen rapidly in the field of quantum computing. Alibaba began to pay attention to quantum computing in 2015 and established Asia's first quantum computing laboratory in cooperation with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In February 2018, the Institute of Quantum Information and Quantum Technology Innovation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Alibaba Cloud announced that the 11-qubit superconducting quantum computing service was launched on the quantum computing cloud platform. In May 2018, Shi Yaoyun's team at Alibaba Quantum Laboratory announced the successful development of the world's most powerful quantum circuit simulator, named Taizhang.

The rapid rise of Alibaba shows China's technological ambitions. Tencent and Baidu also began research on quantum computing in 2017 and 2018. Leifeng.com also learned that the Chinese government has pledged to invest $10 billion to build a new national quantum laboratory.

These projects are part of a growing international race: The European Union is planning to invest $1.1 billion in quantum research, and in the United States, although the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has been significantly scaled back under Trump, the research team in December got its first quantum computing expert, Ken Taylo, a researcher at the University of Maryland.

Alibaba's Shi Yaoyun does not deny the importance of quantum supremacy, but he advises Google and other quantum computing researchers to be more calm. "For device physicists, worrying about when to reach supremacy is like worrying about when your child will be smarter than your dog," he said. "As long as you focus on taking good care of him, it will happen, even if you are not sure when it will be."

Compiled by Leifeng.com, via wired