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Chinese state researchers recently developed a quantum computing system that is believed to be 10 billion times faster than Google’s “Sycamore” machine. If this is true, it would represent a milestone for the field.
In the front: As far as we can tell, this is true. After a quick glance at the research paper and a glance at the peer response, it’s obvious that the Chinese team has managed to do something extraordinary here.
Here is the jargon of the paper itself:
Quantum computers promise to perform certain tasks that are considered unsolvable for classical computers. Sampling the boson is such a task and is considered a strong candidate to demonstrate the advantage of quantum computing. We perform Gaussian boson sampling by sending 50 indistinguishable single-mode compressed states into a 100-mode ultra-low loss interferometer with full connectivity and a random array – the entire optical configuration is phase locked – and sampling the output using 100 photon detectors.
Basically, everything says researchers have built a quantum computing machine that uses light to perform a very specific task (boson sampling) for the sole purpose of demonstrating and measuring its effectiveness.
Context: The reason this is important is that quantum computers can, in theory, solve really difficult problems. We’re talking about the kind of problems physicists and computer scientists estimate would take thousands of years for a classical machine to solve.
In 2018, Google claimed to have developed the first machine capable of demonstrating a “quantum advantage”. It just means that it would have made a quantum computer capable of doing something that a classical computer couldn’t or couldn’t do in a reasonable amount of time.
Google claimed that its system, a 53-qubit machine flipping a quantum chip called “Sycamore,” could solve a specific problem that a supercomputer couldn’t. Unfortunately for Google, IBM quickly disputed this claim. According to Big Blue, it can fix the same problem on one of its classic supercomputers in a matter of days – and that’s with algorithms that were already in existence at the time of Google’s announcement.
Quick setting: What China has done is completely different from what Google has done. In essence, China has built a machine that can only perform the experiment described as demonstrating quantum supremacy. In other words: it doesn’t solve any problems, which makes its designation as a computer somewhat honorary.
Google’s machine, on the other hand, is “programmable”. This means that it could, in theory, be adapted to solve one or more problems.
That’s not to say that what China has done isn’t a breakthrough. Pushing the boundaries of what quantum science can achieve is the goal of everyone working in the field. Different laboratories around the world working on building quantum computing machines are using different approaches because, although the future is bright for the field, we are still taking the theoretical first steps towards useful quantum computing.
Chinese methods may have enabled the latest breakthrough, but as Lu Chaoyang, the professor leading the experiment told the Financial Times:
Building a quantum computer is a race between humans and nature, not between countries.
For more information on quantum computing, check out our introduction here.
Published December 4, 2020 – 18:47 UTC
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