Chinese quantum computer ‘sets record’ in processing test
- Developers say the Zuchongzhi device can do in just over an hour a task that supercomputers would take years to achieve
- Results surpass those produced by Google’s Sycamore processor in an experiment two years ago, they say
In a non-peer-reviewed paper released late last month, the team led by Pan Jianwei, a physicist from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, said the Zuchongzhi quantum processor set a record to challenge “classical computing”.
“Our experiment unambiguously established a computational task that can be completed by a quantum computer in 1.2 hours but will take at least an unreasonable time for any supercomputers,” the team said in the paper published on pre-print service ArXiv.org.
The Chinese scientists said they used random quantum circuit sampling as a metric to evaluate the power of their quantum processor.
“Our experimental results of random quantum circuit ... on Zuchongzhi quantum processor established a new record to challenge the classical computing capability,” they said in the paper.
“We also expect this large-scale, high-performance quantum processor could enable us to pursue valuable [noisy intermediate-scale quantum] applications beyond classical computers in the near future.”
