For quantum computers to be considered viable, they need to successfully and verifiably perform tasks that are hard to reproduce on any classical computer – a situation known as “quantum advantage”. As both quantum computers and classical methods improve, however, it becomes difficult to draw the line beyond which quantum machines have the upper hand.

A recent development spearheaded by researchers at the University of Bristol, UK, has taken the competition up a notch by showing that classical machines can solve one such “hard” task drastically faster than previously thought. Although the quantum computer remains in the lead, the Bristol team’s new algorithm narrows the gap between classical and quantum by about nine orders of magnitude.

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