13/11/2019

The first flight of quantum computing

Foto: Google

Reproduction of Marcelo Viana's column in Folha de S.Paulo.

Who invented aviation? In Brazil, we know it was Santos Dumont. In the rest of the world, the consensus is that it was the Wright brothers. In reality, what these and other pioneers did at the beginning of the 20th century was to build expensive and practically useless machines that only flew a few meters. They proved, however, that flying was possible.

Aviation came later, and in that respect the Wright brothers had two major advantages: entrepreneurial spirit and a national industry capable of carrying out their plans.

Another "chicken flight," which could have even more revolutionary consequences, was reported in the journal Nature: Google announced that it had used a quantum computer to perform in 3 minutes and 20 seconds a calculation that the world's fastest supercomputer would take 10,000 years to do.

The problem this computer tackled—identifying patterns in sequences of random numbers—is not of great practical interest. IBM, a competitor of Google, was quick to claim that classical computers could solve it in just 2.5 days (but offered not to do so…).

Google 's computer cost millions of dollars and is practically useless. Its merit was proving that it's possible.

Quantum computing is one of the most fascinating ideas in science since the 1980s, when it was proposed by Paul Benioff and other scientists. Classical computers store and process information in the form of bits, tiny units capable of assuming only two states: 0 or 1. Quantum computers take advantage of the bizarre properties of matter described by quantum mechanics to perform calculations in a very different way.

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