Google has announced that its quantum computer has completed a computation that exceeds the capabilities of conventional supercomputers. The achievement was made possible by a newly developed algorithm, which computed the structure of molecules — a task relevant to fields including medicine and materials science.
The company noted that practical applications for quantum computers remain years away. “This is the first time in history that any quantum computer has successfully run a verifiable algorithm that surpasses the ability of supercomputers,” Google said in a blog post. The company added that this computation, which can be repeated, establishes a basis for scalable verification and advances efforts toward practical quantum computing.
Michel Devoret, chief scientist at Google’s Quantum AI unit and recent Nobel Prize winner in physics, described the milestone as a step toward full-scale quantum computation. The algorithm reportedly enabled the quantum computer to operate up to 13,000 times faster than classical computers for the tested tasks. The results were published in a peer-reviewed paper in Nature on Wednesday.
Experts note that while the demonstration is significant, it addresses a narrow scientific problem rather than a broad real-world application. Winfried Hensinger, professor of quantum technologies at the University of Sussex, said Google achieved “quantum advantage,” performing a computation that cannot currently be done on classical computers. The computation involved two molecules, with results cross-checked using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques.
Hensinger added that fully fault-tolerant quantum computers capable of more complex and practical tasks would require hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of qubits — units of information in quantum computing. Current hardware, which relies on extremely low temperatures and stable environments, cannot support this scale.
Hartmut Neven, Google’s vice-president of engineering, said real-world applications of quantum computing could be possible within five years using the company’s “quantum echoes” approach. Google also noted that quantum computers may provide unique data inputs for artificial intelligence models, potentially enhancing their capabilities.
Unlike classical computers, which process bits represented as 0 or 1, quantum computers use qubits that can exist in multiple states simultaneously, a property known as superposition. This allows quantum computers to explore large numbers of outcomes at once, but qubits require highly controlled conditions to remain stable.
The progress in quantum computing has prompted cybersecurity concerns, including potential impacts on encryption, leading to calls for quantum-resistant security measures.