Traditional hardware can match Google’s quantum computer performance: Researchers

After Google said they had achieved what quantum computing researchers had sought for years, a team of Chinese researchers now claim to have replicated the performance of Google’s Sycamore quantum computer using traditional hardware.

In 2019, Google researchers claimed they had passed a milestone known as quantum supremacy when their quantum computer Sycamore performed in 200 seconds an abstruse calculation they said would tie up a supercomputer for 10,000 years.

Now, scientists in China have done the computation in a few hours with ordinary processors. A supercomputer, they say, could beat Sycamore outright.