China Makes Quantum Leap In Developing Quantum Computer (scmp.com)

hackingbear writes: Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China created a quantum device, called a boson sampling machine, that can now carry out calculations for five photons, but at a speed 24,000 times faster than previous experiments. Pan Jianwei, the lead scientist on the project, said that though their device was already (only) 10 to 11 times faster at carrying out the calculations than the first electronic digital computer, ENIAC, and the first transistor computer, TRADIC, in running the classical algorithm, their machine would eclipse all of the world's supercomputers in a few years. "Our architecture is feasible to be scaled up to a larger number of photons and with a higher rate to race against increasingly advanced classical computers," they said in the research paper published in Nature Photonics. This device is said to be the first quantum computer beating a real electronic classical computer in practice. Scientists estimate that the current faster supercomputers would struggle to estimate the behavior of 20 photons.

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A quantum leap is hardly noteworthy. Literally that is the smallest possible motion, used in physics for the smallest leaps within an atom.

True, but a quantum leap can occur over an energy-boundary that classical physics would claim can't be overcome. I think that's why the metaphor is applied frequently to an unexpected advance in various fields outside of quantum mechanics.