China Apparently Built A Supercomputer A ‘Million Times Faster’ Than Google’s
Image via via ID 232523929 © Kanawat | Dreamstime.com
A team of researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) have purportedly created a quantum computer that is “10 million times faster than the current fastest supercomputer,” according to a report from the Global Times.
This lightning-fast calculation speed makes it apparently a million times higher than Google’s supercomputer, the Sycamore, which recently spat out a time crystal.
As stated by The Next Web, the research team achieved this by leveraging two technical routes: superconducting quantum computing and photonics quantum computing technology. Google had only achieved the breakthrough in the former, according to the researchers.
This supercomputer, named the Zuchongzhi 2.1 after a famed Chinese mathematician and astrologist, is a 66-qubit system, compared to Google’s 53 qubits. It was built by quantum physicist Pan Jianwei of the University, and a paper on the team’s research was published in the journal Science.
Barry Sanders, a researcher who wasn’t involved in the creation of Zuchongzhi 2.1, explains for APS Physics that the two major results shown “push experimental quantum computing to far larger problem sizes, making it much harder to find classical algorithms and classical computers that can keep up.”
There are “meaningful problems” that can benefit greatly from the abilities this technology has to offer, a majority of which are in the quantum chemistry field. “No convincing experimental demonstration has yet been reported,” Sanders states, but “these experiments further motivate efforts to put quantum sampling to practical use.”
Since it’s all still extremely new and the claims have yet to be truly verified by a party outside the researchers’ team, and Google hasn’t yet said anything about its creation losing out on this front, it does boast quite the breakthrough in quantum computing.
[via The Next Web, image via ID 232523929 © Kanawat | Dreamstime.com]
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