Google and nasa have a computer that's 100 million times faster than a regular pc

Google and NASA have a "D-Wave 2X quantum annealer," and they say it's 100 million times faster than a PC with a single core.

Over the past couple of years, Google's Quantum AI team has been researching quantum annealers and how they can be used effectively.

"We found that for problem instances involving nearly 1000 binary variables, quantum annealing significantly outperforms its classical counterpart, simulated annealing," writes Hartmut Neven on the Google Research blog. "It is more than 108 times faster than simulated annealing running on a single core."

The quantum hardware also outperformed another algorithm called Quantum Monte Carlo by a factor of 100 million in some tests.

Quantum computers are outrageously powerful, however you won't be playing games on them, they're designed to tackle very specific problems. "While these results are intriguing and very encouraging, there is more work ahead to turn quantum enhanced optimization into a practical technology," says Neven.

In other NASA news, the organization recently released footage of the sun in ultra HD, and in other Google news, the tech company might be building its own smartphone.