Google宣布自己已实现“量子霸权”

According to a report in the Financial Times, a team of researchers from Google led by John Martinis have demonstrated quantum supremacy for the first time.

《英国金融时报》的一篇报告称，John Martinis带领的一个Google研究团队首次证明了量子霸权。

This is the point at which a quantum computer is shown to be capable of performing a task that’s beyond the reach of even the most powerful conventional supercomputer.

当时发现一台量子计算机能完成最强大的传统超级计算机都不能完成的任务。

The claim appeared in a paper that was posted on a NASA website, but the publication was then taken down. Google did not respond to a request for comment from MIT Technology Review.

这一声明出现在NASA网站上发表的一篇论文中，但随后被删除了。《麻省理工科技评论》请求Google对此作出评论，但未得到回应。

Google struck an agreement last year to use supercomputers available to NASA as benchmarks for its supremacy experiments.

去年Google决定将NASA可用的超级计算机作为霸权实验的标杆。

According to the Financial Times report, the paper said that Google’s quantum processor was able to perform a calculation in three minutes and 20 seconds that would take today’s most advanced supercomputer, known as Summit, around 10,000 years.

据《英国金融时报》报道，该论文称Google的量子处理器能在3分20秒内完成现在最先进的超级计算机Summit一万年才能完成的计算。

In the paper, the researchers said that, to their knowledge, the experiment “marks the first computation that can only be performed on a quantum processor.”

该论文中研究人员称，据他们所知这一实验“标志着第一个只能在量子处理器上进行的计算”。

Quantum machines are so powerful because they harness quantum bits, or qubits. Unlike classical bits, which represent either a 1 or a 0, qubits can be in a kind of combination of both at the same time.

量子计算机如此强大是因为他们利用了量子比特或量子位。经典的二进制只代表1或0，而量子位不一样，可以同时是两者的一种组合。

Thanks to other quantum phenomena, which are described in our explainer here, quantum computers can crunch large amounts of data in parallel that conventional machines have to work through sequentially.

多亏了其他我们在解释中描述过的量子现象，量子计算机可以并行运算大量数据，而传统计算机只能按顺序进行运算。

Scientists have been working for years to demonstrate that the machines can definitively outperform conventional ones.

科学家已研究多年，想要证明量子计算机绝对优于传统计算机。