China claims to have a quantum computer a million times more powerful than Google

Researchers at the University of Science and Technology in China recently published a paper stating that they have created a quantum computer that is a million times faster than Google's Sycamore machine.

According to a Global Times report, the Chinese system is "10 million times faster than the fastest supercomputer to date, and its computational complexity is more than 1 million times that of Google's Sycamore processor."

What is known?

Researchers have built a 66-cubit quantum computer. Using two different technological paradigms, photonic and superconducting, they were able to run certain algorithms at a scale that would presumably be too complex for a classical computer.

In comparison, Google's Sycamore system is a 53-cube system, and according to the Chinese research team, it can only use the superconducting paradigm.

Is it real?

Quantum physicist Barry Sanders, director of the Quantum Science and Technology Institute at the University of Calgary, seems over the moon.

In his article for the journal APS Physics, he writes:

Two major results obtained by the group ... advance experimental quantum computing to much larger problem sizes, making it much harder to find classical algorithms and classical computers that can keep up with the times. These results give us even more credence to the claim that we have indeed reached the era of quantum superiority in computing.

But is this really the case? The types of algorithms being run are not particularly useful in everyday life outside of the research lab. In fact, they are giant math problems that can be made exponentially more complex. According to an article by Chinese researchers, their systems have achieved first place based on estimates that they can execute algorithms in minutes, which the world's fastest supercomputers would take 10,000 years to do.

A spoonful of tar

"Quantum superiority" is a made-up term with no real basis in fact. We haven't reached the point where the world has declared a dead end for classical computing, nor have we exhausted our collective ability to tune, tweak and optimize algorithms. This means that anyone who claims they can execute an algorithm that a classical system would take 10,000 years to do in a matter of seconds is usually hyperbolizing their theoretical calculations.

But quantum superiority claims aside, this is an incredible study. This work almost certainly represents a major breakthrough in quantum computing. And when the dust settles, it will be interesting to see what the team does next.

Source: aps.org, aps.org 2, thenextweb

Illustration: Chao-Yang Lu/University of Science and Technology of China