[refraining from any comment about quantum leaps]
The researchers estimate that performing the same experiment on a Google Cloud server would take 50 trillion hours—too long to be feasible. On the quantum processor, it took only 30 seconds, they said.
"While development is still at mile one of this marathon, we strongly believe in the potential of this technology," Clarke added.
I believe that quantum computers are expected to be vastly better at some things (breaking cryptographic keys), but not at all things. Is that correct? That is, it breaks Moore's Law with respect to some types of computing, but not with respect to all types.
The Problem with Quantum Computing: Decoherence
Quantum computers are exceedingly difficult to engineer, build and program. As a result, they are crippled by errors in the form of noise, faults and loss of quantum coherence, which is crucial to their operation and yet falls apart before any nontrivial program has a chance to run to completion.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-problem-with-quantum-computers/Six Things Quantum Computing Will Be Good For
https://singularityhub.com/2017/06/25/6-things-quantum-computers-will-be-incredibly-useful-for/Short answer: AI, molecular modeling, cryptography, weather forecasting, financial modeling, particle physics.
Putting all that together, what will they be bad for? Running your self-driving car, the air traffic control system or your pacemaker. But if you get caught out in the rain without an umbrella or raincoat, you won't be able to blame the weather forecaster. Oh, and all your passwords are no longer strong enough.
