This breakthrough is only a big deal from a practical perspective in that it very strongly suggests that further research on engineering large quantum computers will provide the exponential performance improvements predicted by quantum complexity theory. That is to say that this is a strong “go” signal in a go/no-go test.
In terms of where I am personally excited about quantum computing, it has the potential to greatly speed up simulations of chemical and material science properties that are currently hard to simulate accurately at all. This will be great for, for example, semiconductor development and medicine. These applications are a ways off though, but if we weren’t hitting milestones like today, it would suggest they were not worth vigorously pursuing.
Disclaimer: I work at Google, not on quantum computers. Not an expert in quantum computation.
In terms of where I am personally excited about quantum computing, it has the potential to greatly speed up simulations of chemical and material science properties that are currently hard to simulate accurately at all. This will be great for, for example, semiconductor development and medicine. These applications are a ways off though, but if we weren’t hitting milestones like today, it would suggest they were not worth vigorously pursuing.
Disclaimer: I work at Google, not on quantum computers. Not an expert in quantum computation.