Google vs IBM
Emailed on October 25th, 2019 in The Friday Forward
Using the company's state-of-the-art quantum computer, called Sycamore, Google has claimed "quantum supremacy" over the most powerful supercomputers in the world by solving a problem considered virtually impossible for normal machines.
The quantum computer completed the complex computation in 200 seconds. That same calculation would take even the most powerful supercomputers approximately 10,000 years to finish.
Humble brag: "It is likely that the classical simulation time, currently estimated at 10,000 years, will be reduced by improved classical hardware and algorithms," Brooks Foxen, a graduate student researcher in John Martinis' lab, the experimental physicist leading the study. "But since we are currently 1.5 trillion times faster, we feel comfortable laying claim to this achievement," he added, referring to the supremacy of quantum computers.
Grab your popcorn, this is getting juicy: IBM responded to Google's announcement claiming Google is off by a factor of almost 1.5 million. 150 million percent.
IBM says that Google’s mistakenly thinking that the RAM storage requirements in a traditional computer would be massive – too massive to run quickly. In fact, IBM says, if you take into account the fact that classical computers can access huge amounts of both RAM and hard disk space, that 10,000 years drops dramatically.
IBM says the classical calculation would take something like 2.5 days, not 10,000 years. And that’s actually a “worst-case estimate,” it could probably be done faster.
Taking a step back: I'm not going to pretend to know anything more about this particular debate.
*Nodding in agreement*