  Boson sampling is considered as a strong candidate to demonstrate the quantum
computational supremacy over classical computers. However, previous
proof-of-principle experiments suffered from small photon number and low
sampling rates owing to the inefficiencies of the single-photon sources and
multi-port optical interferometers. Here, we develop two central components for
high-performance boson sampling: robust multi-photon interferometers with 0.99
transmission rate, and actively demultiplexed single-photon sources from a
quantum-dot-micropillar with simultaneously high efficiency, purity and
indistinguishability. We implement and validate 3-, 4-, and 5-photon boson
sampling, and achieve sampling rates of 4.96 kHz, 151 Hz, and 4 Hz,
respectively, which are over 24,000 times faster than the previous experiments,
and over 220 times faster than obtaining one sample through calculating the
matrices permanent using the first electronic computer (ENIAC) and
transistorized computer (TRADIC) in the human history. Our architecture is
feasible to be scaled up to larger number of photons and with higher rate to
race against classical computers, and might provide experimental evidence
against the Extended Church-Turing Thesis.
