IBM casts doubt on Google's claims of quantum supremacy

"Because the original meaning of the term “quantum supremacy,” as proposed by John Preskill in 2012, was to describe the point where quantum computers can do things that classical computers can’t, this threshold has not been met."

In other words, "quantum supremacy" is not being used as just a buzzword.

So yeah, IBM is casting doubt on Google's claims of "quantum supremacy" because "supremacy" doesn't just mean "better than everything else."

Re: IBM casts doubt on Google's claims of quantum supremacy

#6

Post by nautilus12 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 12:32 PM UTC

Saying that it evokes "white supremecy" is kind of a pathetic move.

Re: IBM casts doubt on Google's claims of quantum supremacy

#7

Post by excalibur » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 12:37 PM UTC

iherbig wrote: post #5

IshKebab wrote: post #3

Not really though - they just said it wasn't quite as supreme as Google said.

IBM's response to Google called "On 'Quantum Supremacy'" has this to say: "Because the original meaning of the term “quantum supremacy,” as proposed by John Preskill in 2012, was to describe the point where quantum computers can do things that classical computers can’t, this threshold has not been met." In other words, "quantum supremacy" is not being used as just a buzzword. So yeah, IBM is casting doubt on Google's…

But it's still pretty fuzzy. If we agree that 10,000 years on a classical system is supremacy but 2.5 years isn't, where's the cutoff? 25 years? 250? An average human lifespan?

Edit: Thanks guys for pointing out where I misread the article, leaving mistake intact so the replies make sense.

Re: IBM casts doubt on Google's claims of quantum supremacy

#8

Post by akjssdk » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 12:38 PM UTC

The main takeaway here is figure 1 in this article: they show that for an increasing circuit depth, computation time (on a classical computer) scales linearly. Google claims, on the other hand, that a classical calculation would scale exponentially. This is the basis for the graph in the Google blog [1], which seems to suggest that the Quantum computer can easily reach points (such as qbits=50, cycles=25) which the classical computer would never be able to reach. This is not true, if IBM is right. Their linearly scaling graph proves that they are not nitpicking their input, I would say.

[1]: https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/10/quantum-supremacy-using-pr...

Re: IBM casts doubt on Google's claims of quantum supremacy

#9

Post by lm28469 » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 12:38 PM UTC

nautilus12 wrote: post #6

Saying that it evokes "white supremecy" is kind of a pathetic move.

> IBM's researchers argue that the term "supremacy" is in danger of being misunderstood by those outside the rarefied world of quantum geeks.

Supremacy means exactly what it's supposed to mean for everyone outside and inside of science. What's the next step, google can't call its pixels "Just Black and Clearly White" because people would be confused about if it is racist or not... The world truly is becoming a weirder place by the minute.

Re: IBM casts doubt on Google's claims of quantum supremacy

#10

Post by nevi-me » Wed, Oct 23, 2019, 12:39 PM UTC

I'm a layman on this, but reading IBM's rebuttal, it seems that they're saying "you can't say that a conventional supercomputer would take 10'000 years because you haven't accounted for spilling to disk and other optimisations".

I understand that some of these optimisations might be on the processing logic, but doesn't this end up being like comparing apples to oranges?

I understand that there's also what seems to be technicalities around what is "quantum supremacy", but I assume that on a 'processor against processor' basis, this is still significant. Am I oversimplifying things?