Two teams of Chinese scientists claim to have achieved ‘quantum supremacy’ with programmable quantum computers.
One of the systems, Zuchongzhi 2.1, is claimed to be a million times faster than its closest confirmed rival, Google’s Sycamore quantum processor.
Quantum supremacy, also referred to as quantum advantage, is the goal of demonstrating a quantum device capable of making calculations that classical computers could not feasibly match in a reasonable timeframe.
That appears to be the case here, as the light-based Jiuzhang 2 is claimed to have taken one millisecond to complete a task that would take the most powerful conventional supercomputer 30 trillion years!
Details of the two systems were published in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Letters and Science Bulletin.
The teams behind both systems are based at the National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at China’s University of Science and Technology (USTC) and headed by renowned quantum physicist Pan Jianwei.
Quantum machines used superconductors and photons
One team used a superconductor-based system to create the Zuchongzhi machine, which is named after a 5th-century Chinese mathematician whose calculation of pi would not be surpassed for another eight centuries.
It needs to be kept at extremely low temperatures in order to operate.
The other system, Jiuzhang 2, used a photonic or light-based approach, with the photons being manipulated using techniques including beam splitters, phase shifters and physical mirrors.
The photonic machine is an upgraded version of a device built by the team last year, and each photon carries a qubit, the basic quantum information unit.
In both instances, the goal was to calculate output probabilities of quantum circuits.
This is a relatively simple calculation when there are only a few inputs and outputs involved and well within the capabilities of powerful conventional computers.
The complexity can quickly ramp up as the inputs and outputs increase, however, eventually becoming infeasible even for the most powerful of classical supercomputers.
While the quantum computers can operate incredibly quickly, however, they won’t be replacing conventional supercomputers in practical applications just yet.
At the moment, both require very specific and protected environments to operate, and they can only work on extremely narrow, specific tasks.
The results seem to demonstrate the incredible potential of quantum computing though and could accelerate progress in quantum error correction – reducing the number of mistakes that quantum computing currently throws up.
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