IBM Quantum Computers Poised to Outperform Billions of Supercomputers

IBM Research Chief Dario Gil recently appeared on CBS's '60 Minutes' to discuss the potential of quantum computers. According to Gil, once practical use is achieved, these devices will be able to handle calculations that cannot be handled even by linking a large number of conventional supercomputers.

Gil emphasized the way quantum computers scale computation, stating that while conventional computing expands processing power by scaling hardware, quantum computers have a different structure, allowing computing power to grow exponentially as more qubits are added.

He also explained that the concept of 'quantum advantage' is difficult to grasp intuitively. As the number of qubits increases from just a few to thousands and tens of thousands, performance grows not linearly but exponentially.

IBM believes that because a quantum computer's capabilities expand sharply as more qubits are added, it could someday perform tasks that are difficult even to conceptualize within today's computing framework.