IBM challenges Google’s quantum supremacy claim

IBM’s quantum team is dismissing Google’s claim of demonstrating quantum supremacy. Google had a 53-qubit quantum computer perform a series of tasks in 200 seconds, claiming it would take a supercomputer approximately 10,000 years to complete the same job. IBM, however, says it devised a better classical simulation that could finish the calculations in 2.5 days maximum – and probably even faster.

In its blog post, IBM echoes concerns about the term “quantum supremacy” that were recently discussed by John Preskill, who coined it. Preskill argues it to be misleading to the general public, as achieving it doesn’t mean quantum computers can do anything useful. Secondly, quantum computers will always need to work in concert with classical computers.