A team of engineers from the China University of Science and Technology claims to have achieved the most powerful quantum computer on the planet. According to his test, the Chinese computer resolved in just over an hour a problem that the world’s most powerful traditional supercomputer would have taken eight years to solve. And this is just the beginning, they say.
According to the project leader Jian-Wei Pan —Which the prestigious scientific journal ‘Nature’ described as the “father of the quantum” when it named him one of the 10 great scientists of 2017-, his quantum computer Zuchongzhi has broken the record that Google established in 2019 for solving a similar problem, but 100 times easier Than the one the Asian machine has solved.
China continues to give surprises
If what scientists from China University of Science and Technology say in your research It is true —and it does not seem that they are lying—, it would be another example of the hyper-acceleration that China is printing to its technological development to try to overtake the West and achieve supremacy in the different engineering that will define the future of humanity: quantum computing, artificial intelligence, fusion energy, space exploration and genetics. This is something that we have observed in the news of this section, that sometimes we think about changing from Novaceno to Chinacene.
In fact, it is not the first time that China has beaten the rest of the world in quantum computing. It already beat Google’s record in 2020 – achieved with superconducting qubits – with a machine that used photonic qubits. But that computer was experimental and not programmable, as Zuchongzhi is. The Jian-Wei Pan team’s machine uses superconducting qubits like Google’s.
According to the study by Chinese engineers, Zuchongzhi is a 2D quantum computer with the ability to manipulate 66 qubits simultaneously. To solve this problem – 100 times more complicated than the one Google solved in 2019 with its Sycamore computer – Zuchongzhi only used 56 qubits.
These types of problems – which have to deal with random matrix theory, mathematical analysis, quantum chaos and probability theory – are the standard test used to measure the power of this type of machine.
The Chinese team claims that their computer solved this Gordian knot in just 1.2 hours: “We estimate that a traditional supercomputer would use at least eight years [para resolver el mismo problema]”Not only that, but also, Zuchongzhi is much faster than this test indicates. That’s because he has only used 56 of his 66 qubits. In theory, each extra qubit it would increase the processing power exponentially.
In other words: if you have children, sign them up for Mandarin courses urgently.