SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google aims to release commercial quantum computing applications within five years, Google's head of quantum told Reuters on Wednesday, in a challenge to Nvidia's ( NVDA ) predictions of a 20-year wait.

"We're optimistic that within five years we'll see real-world applications that are possible only on quantum computers," founder and lead of Google Quantum AI Hartmut Neven said in a statement.

Real-world applications Google has discussed are related to materials science - applications such as building superior batteries for electric cars - creating new drugs and potentially new energy alternatives.

Google's prediction arrives amid wider uncertainty about when such a breakthrough will occur. Predictions from investors and experts range from several years to at least two decades.

For decades, scientists have been discussing quantum computing, which promises to deliver machines that are thousands of times more powerful than traditional computers. Traditional computers process information one number at a time, whereas quantum computers use "qubits" that can represent several numbers at once.

Governments and businesses have kept a close eye on quantum computing's potential to disrupt modern cybersecurity and other fields such as finance and healthcare.

Quantum computing resembles artificial intelligence in some ways. AI before ChatGPT's launch in 2022 was understood mostly by scientists. Scientists had been quietly producing breakthroughs to accelerate the field but there was no firm understanding of when AI would be commercially useful.

TWO DECADES OUT

Nvidia's ( NVDA ) Jensen Huang has said that quantum computing is much farther away than five years. At an analyst event at the CES trade show in Las Vegas in January, Huang predicted practical uses for quantum computers are about 20 years away.

"If you kind of said 15 years... that'd probably be on the early side," Huang said, "If you said 30, it's probably on the late side. But if you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it."

Huang's comments ripped about $8 billion in market value from a handful of quantum computing stocks. The sector was given a boost in December when Google announced it had cracked a key challenge in the field with its new chips. 

Google has been working on its quantum computing program since 2012 and has designed and built several quantum chips. By using quantum processors, Google said it had managed to solve a computing problem in minutes that would take a classical computer more time than the history of the universe.

Google's quantum computing scientists announced another step on the path to real world applications within five years on Wednesday.

In a paper published in the scientific journal Nature, the scientists said they had discovered a new approach to quantum simulation, which is a step on the path to achieving Google's objective.