Sycamore processor

Sycamore is a quantum processor created by Google Inc.'s Artificial Intelligence division.[1] It comprises 53 qubits.

In 2019, Sycamore completed a task in 200 seconds that Google claimed, in a Nature paper, would take a state-of-the-art supercomputer 10,000 years to finish. Thus, Google claimed to have achieved quantum supremacy. To estimate the time that would be taken by a classical supercomputer, Google ran portions of the quantum circuit simulation on the Summit, the most powerful classical computer in the world.[2][3][4][5] Later, IBM made a counter-argument, claiming that the task would only take 2.5 days on a classical system like Summit.[6][7] If Google's claims are upheld, then it would represent an exponential leap in computing power.[8][9][10][11]

In August 2020 quantum engineers working for Google reported the largest chemical simulation on a quantum computer – a Hartree-Fock approximation with Sycamore paired with a classical computer that analyzed results to provide new parameters for the 12-qubit system.[12][13][14]

In December 2020, the Chinese photon-based Jiuzhang processor, developed by USTC, achieved a processing power of 76 qubits and was 10 billion times faster than Sycamore, making it the second computer to attain quantum supremacy.[15]