In the race to quantum computing, China is quickly forgotten at times. However, it seems that the country is more active and more active in this area, and for some time the number of ads has increased even if it is not always possible to check them.
And so, at the beginning of the year, researchers at USTC in Hefei claimed the quantum advantage by performing sampling of bosons with a fairly special and truly non-programmable quantum computer in 200 seconds when it would have taken 600 million years at the world’s most powerful HPC to achieve a similar result .
today is researchers USTC in Shanghai has announced that it has the most powerful quantum computer at the moment. The Zuchongzhi It will be equipped with a 66-kilobit quantum processor (and 110 couplers), organized into a grid of 11 rows and 6 columns. The processor uses “transmon” qubits, which are, simply put, nonlinear oscillators based on the superconducting Josephson effect.
According to the researchers, all 66 qubits are functional; however, the computation they used to measure its performance used only 56 qubits. This calculation is based on random sampling from a quantum circuit, a calculation similar to the one Google used in 2019 to claim quantum supremacy (with Sycamore 53 qubits). According to Chinese researchers, the problem they presented is 100 times more difficult than that of Google.
And Zuchonghzi produced a result in about 1.2 hours when it would have taken at least 8 years of computation for the most powerful current HPCs, the Fugaku (Japanese HPC leading the TOP500).
All this however remains relatively theoretical (at least an estimate of the computing time needed for Fugaku) and very far from corporate needs.
But the announcement once again shows that China is making progress and has quantum computers while Europe has not yet produced operational machines.
