Zuchongzhi (quantum computer)

2021: Demonstration of the world's most powerful quantum computer

In mid-July 2021, Chinese researchers demonstrated the most powerful in the world, quantum computer squeezed processor Sycamore from Google leadership positions.

A team of researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China has developed a two-dimensional programmable superconducting quantum processor called Zuchongzhi, capable of combining up to 66 qubits, but the researchers used only 56 qubits to demonstrate its capabilities. The computer solved the reference problem of modeling random quantum chains (random quantum circuits), which includes long sequences of operations on qubits and measuring results. The more qubits in the system, the more difficult it is to solve the problem. Getting the same results on a classic supercomputer is extremely difficult due to the need to miscalculate a huge number of possible states in which the system may be located.

China has created the world's most powerful quantum computer Zuchongzhi

Zuchongzhi in an hour coped with a task that would take the classic computer more than eight years to solve. This task is about 100 times more complicated than the one solved by the Google Sycamore quantum processor in 2019, previously called the most powerful in the world. The Sycamore quantum system used 54 qubits, and the Zuchongzhi system - 56, and at the same time demonstrated the result proving that with an increase in the number of quantum bits, the performance of the quantum system increases exponentially. Thus, the new Chinese development is the most powerful programmable quantum computer in the world, and has the potential to increase performance when activating all available 66 qubits.

Peter Knight of British Imperial College in London noted that the Zuchongzhi system proved experimentally theoretical findings:

Now we reliably know that we can surpass the performance of classic machines by adding several more qubits.[1]

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