How long before quantum computers can benefit society? That’s Google’s USD 5 million question

Austin, Mar 27 Google and the XPrize Foundation have launched a competition worth US$5 million to develop real-world applications for quantum computers that benefit society – by speeding up progress on one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, for example. The principles of quantum physics suggest quantum computers could perform very fast calculations on particular problems, so this competition may expand the range of applications where they have an advantage over conventional computers. The main bottleneck holding up this development is that the software – using quantum algorithms – needs to demonstrate an advantage over computers based on classical physics. A crucial way quantum computing differs from classical computing is in using a property known as “entanglement”.