2019/10/15 by John M. Martinis, Boixo, Sergio, Neven, Hartmut +74 · 1 voice
Computer Science · #Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture
paper · doi:10.5061/dryad.k6t1rj8
openalex publication_date 2019/10/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
The tantalizing promise of quantum computers is that certain computational tasks might be executed exponentially faster on a quantum processor than on a classical processor. A fundamental challenge is to build a high-fidelity processor capable of running quantum algorithms in an exponentially large computational space. Here, we report using a processor with programmable superconducting qubits to create quantum states on 53 qubits, corresponding to a computational state-space of dimension 253 ∼ 1016. Measurements from repeated experiments sample the corresponding probability distribution, which we verify using classical simulations. While our processor takes about 200 seconds to sample one instance of a quantum circuit 1 million times, a state-of-the-art supercomputer would require approximately 10,000 years to perform the equivalent task. This dramatic speedup relative to all known classical algorithms provides an experimental realization of quantum supremacy on a computational task and heralds the advent of a much-anticipated computing paradigm.