Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) have unveiled a superconducting quantum computing prototype that is a million times faster than Google’s Sycamore quantum processor, which was showcased last year.
Dubbed Zuchongzhi-3, USTC’s quantum processor features 105 qubits and 182 couplers and demonstrated its superiority in random quantum circuit sampling tasks, a university press release said. In comparison, Google’s Sycamore processor, which had achieved quantum supremacy, had 67 qubits.
Even as we have just begun to build exascale supercomputers, scientists are working to build the next generation of computers that can perform, in seconds, computations that would run for years on supercomputers. This is being attempted using quantum-scale properties of materials, and researchers in the US and China are locked in a race to come out on top and demonstrate their technological superiority in this field.
The scientific community agrees that quantum computing development will be achieved through three major steps – achieving quantum supremacy – where the quantum computer supersedes most advanced classical computers; developing quantum simulators with hundreds of qubits that can solve real-world problems, and finally, increasing precision and accuracy of results to develop general-purpose quantum computers.
We are still in the initial stages of this development, but China already has the upper hand.
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