Google and NASA claim quantum computing milestone

Public-private partnership yields politically and technically important bragging rights

Researchers working at Google and NASA have claimed to have achieved the long-sought milestone known as quantum supremacy—getting a quantum computer to perform a task that a classical computer cannot.

The organisations announced on 23 October that Google had used its Sycamore quantum processor to complete in 200 seconds a task that, according to collaborators at NASA’s Ames Research Center and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, would take a leading classical supercomputer about 10,000 years.