Scientists create first photon quantum computer

China has created the world's first photon quantum computer, which is expected by 2020 to work at speeds that eclipse the most powerful supercomputer, scientists said.

The device, called a boson-sampling machine, is 10 to 100 times faster than electronic and transistor computers, which were developed in the mid-20th century, and is 24,000 times faster than experimental quantum devices developed in other countries, said Pan Jianwei, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the leading quantum physicist involved in building the machine.

One analogy to explain the speed of quantum computing is like being able to read all the entries in a phone book at the same time, while conventional computers, even supercomputers, have to read entries one by one.