In July this year, a team in China demonstrated that it has the world’s most
powerful quantum computer, finally leapfrogging Google, who claimed to have
achieved quantum supremacy back in 2019. Back then, China was touting a
super-advanced 66-qubit quantum supercomputer called “Zuchongzhi” as a
contender against Google’s 54-qubit Sycamore processor. But while Google’s
quantum computers have not progressed noticeably since then, China on the
other hand never slowed down, coming up with more powerful quantum
processors.
According to a recent study published in peer-reviewed journal Physical
Review Letters and Science Bulletin, physicists in China claim they’ve
constructed two quantum computers with performance speeds that far outrival
competitors in the US or indeed anywhere in the world — debuting a
superconducting machine along with a speedier unit that uses light photons
to obtain unprecedented results.
What sets quantum computers from China apart?
To recall, China launched the world’s first quantum satellite in 2016 and
the largest land-based quantum communications network in 2019. Despite
having been a step or two behind the West in quantum computer technology, it
never stopped trying and innovating.
What makes the latest revelation more interesting is the fact that the
light-based Jiuzhang 2 can calculate in one millisecond, a task that would
take the world’s fastest conventional computer up to 30 trillion years. It
basically has a narrower field of applications but can reach a speed of 100
sextillion (one followed by 23 zeros) times faster than the largest
conventional computers.
Jiuzhang 2 is actually an upgrade of a machine built by Pan’s team last
year, uses photons, each one carrying a qubit – the basic unit of quantum
information. Lead scientist with the Jiuzhang project, Lu Chaoyang
highlighted that they “have increased the number of photons from 76 to 113,
(the new machine) is billions of billions of times faster than
supercomputers.”
Then there is Zuchongzhi 2 – an upgrade from an earlier machine released
three months ago that can run a calculation task one million times more
complex than Sycamore, lead researcher Pan Jianwei said. Unfortunately
despite their speed efficiencies, these machines won’t be replaced by common
computers any time soon. Currently, they work only in a protected
environment for brief periods on highly specific tasks, and they make a lot
of mistakes.
“In the next step we hope to achieve quantum error correction with
four to five years of hard work,” Pan said during an interview with the
research team with China’s state-owned CCTV. Additionally, he claims
that it is possible to “explore the use of some dedicated quantum computers
or quantum simulators to solve some of the most important scientific
questions with practical value, based on the technology of quantum error
correction.”
Pan noted that the circuits of the Zuchongzhi have to be cooled to very low
temperatures to enable optimal performance for a complex task called random
walk, which is a model that corresponds to the tactical movements of pieces
on a chessboard. According to the
South China Morning Post, the model assumes that the movement of a chess piece can be completely
random, without any association with previous moves.
In classical computers, the process is difficult to simulate because it
requires a huge amount of calculation based on complex algorithms, but it
becomes easy with the help of quantum physics. Other applications range from
predicting stock prices to calculating gene mutations, the formation of new
materials, and air flows in hypersonic flight at Mach 5 or beyond.
Reference:
Yulin Wu et al. Strong Quantum Computational Advantage Using a
Superconducting Quantum Processor Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 180501, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.180501
Tags:
Physics
Everyone wishes that China's great progress could be used for world peace and stability, not otherwise.
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