This archive report was first published on 24 October 2019.
On October 23, 2019, Google announced a major breakthrough in computing, claiming to have achieved 'quantum supremacy' with its Sycamore quantum computer.
The team of experts working on the Sycamore machine said their quantum system had executed a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken a classic computer 10,000 years to complete.
Google's CEO Sundar Pichai hailed the result as a sea change in computing, saying it was the 'hello world' moment the industry had been waiting for.
"For those of us working in science and technology, it's the most meaningful milestone to date in the quest to make quantum computing a reality," Pichai wrote in a blog post.
However, rival team at IBM has expressed scepticism about the claim, saying that the boasts of the Sycamore computer's feats were exaggerated.
"Because the original meaning of the term 'quantum supremacy'... was to describe the point where quantum computers can do things that classical computers can't, this threshold has not been met," IBM scientists wrote on their blog.
