New York (AFP)

The US computer giant Google claims to have reached a milestone known as "quantum supremacy" by manufacturing a machine with capabilities far superior to those of the most powerful conventional computers, according to the Financial Times.

These calculators of a new type are able, for some tasks, to realize them much more quickly than current machines because they can use astonishing properties of the particles allowing to escape the rules of the classical physics.

A study of Google researchers describing this innovation, as seen by journalists from the business daily, was briefly published on the NASA website this week before being removed.

The researchers would say that their processor is capable of conducting an operation in three minutes and twenty seconds where it would take 10,000 years at most advanced computers today.

They would have reached the "quantum supremacy", clearly demonstrating that a quantum computer beats performance of a conventional computer.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, had not immediately responded to AFP's solicitations.

According to researchers at the California company, the machine can solve only one calculation at a time and the use of quantum machines for real industrial applications will not be done for several years.

But it's "an essential step towards large-scale quantum computing," they write in the study, according to the Financial Times.

If there are already prototypes of quantum computers, they can only perform tasks similar to those performed by a normal computer, but more quickly.

Successful quantum computers could change the game in areas such as cryptography, chemistry or artificial intelligence.

Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, running for the Democratic primary, welcomed the move.

"That Google is implementing quantum computing is an important step, which means, among other things, that no code is indecipherable," he wrote on Twitter.

© 2019 AFP