Google announced quantum supremacy successfully achieved by Sycamore, their quantum computer in 2019. Quantum supremacy is the degree to which a quantum computer can perform calculations much faster than conventional computers. In 2019, Sycamore performed a complex mass calculation in just 200 seconds whereas conventional computers needed up to 10,000 years to perform the same task.
But now researchers from the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in China have managed to do the same calculations as Sycamore at a faster time using a conventional computer. A computer equipped with a 2300 GPU NVIDIA A100 only takes 14.22 seconds using as much as 2.39 kWh of electricity. It can also do the same calculation in 17.18 seconds if power consumption is reduced to just 0.29 kWh. In comparison, the Sycamore requires 4.3 kWh of electricity for the same task.
This clearly destroys the quantum superiority that Google achieved almost five years ago. However, this does not mean that quantum computers are no longer valuable. On the other hand since 2019, technological developments in the quantum computing arena have been growing with Sycamore itself being upgraded.
The results of this latest study simply show that the limits of conventional computing technology have not yet been reached and that there are still many improvements that can be made to improve its performance.