Most powerful quantum computer

Speaking at a meeting of the American Physical Society on 5 March 2018, researchers at tech giant Google announced an operational 72-qubit (quantum bit) computer. Beating the previous IBM record of a 50-qubit processor, the new Google chip will allow computer scientists to explore what quantum processors really can do. At the present, all quantum computers are prone to errors which make them less useful than the cores in our current computers. However, the potential to unlock what is known as 'quantum supremacy', where a quantum computer can solve a problem that a traditional computer couldn't lies somewhere between 49 qubits and 100 qubits. Most computer scientists are of the opinion that the 100-qubit system would allow for an error rate that overcomes the issues of 49-qubit systems, 49 qubits being the minimum theoretical power required to achieve quantum supremacy. The new Google processor is called 'Bristlecone' and will hopefully give scientists more knowledge about how to make quantum computers for everyday computers.

Unlike conventional computers that store and process information using the binary "1" or "0", a quantum computer can process information using "0", "1", or "0 and 1", thus increasing the power of processing capability exponentially. This is made possible by using quantum values of entanglement and superposition in conductive materials. This computer is still tricky to use and quantum bits are really only stable for about 100 microseconds.