Following the release of the "Nine Chapters" quantum computer prototype, China's first maneuverable superconducting quantum computer system "Zu Chong Zhi" was released. This achievement will lay a technical foundation for promoting China's quantum superiority in superconducting quantum systems, and also provide support for the subsequent research and development of general-purpose quantum computing with great practical value.
Academician Pan Jianwei of the University of Science and Technology of China recently successfully developed the prototype "Zu Chong Zhi", the quantum computing prototype with the largest number of superconducting qubits in the world, announcing the birth of the superconducting quantum system with the largest number of qubits in the world. The paper, titled "Quantum Walking on a Programmable Two-Dimensional 62-Bit Quantum Processor," was published May 7 in the journal Science.
Quantum computers are one of the major challenges at the forefront of global science and technology, and they are also the focus of competition around the world. Superconducting quantum computing has become one of the most promising candidates, and its core goal is to increase the number of "maneuverable" qubits and achieve landing applications by improving the accuracy of manipulation.
The "Zu Chong No" can manipulate as many as 62 superconducting qubits, while Google previously achieved "quantum superiority" of "planewood" 53 qubits. The research team realized the experimental observation of quantum walk for the first time on the large-scale lattice, and realized the precise regulation of the quantum walk configuration, and constructed a programmable two-particle quantum walk.
Quantum walking is a quantum mechanical simulation of classical random walking, which is an extremely powerful tool for realizing quantum simulations, quantum search algorithms, and even general quantum computing. "In our work, we designed and fabricated an 8x8 two-dimensional square superconducting qubit array consisting of 62 functional qubit bits," the research team said. We used the device to demonstrate the quantum gait of a high-fidelity single particle and two particles. ”
Due to the high programmability of the quantum processor, the researchers also implemented an interferometer called mach-zehnder. "By adjusting for obstacles on the evolutionary path, we observed interference streaks in both single and double rows. The research team wrote in the paper, "Our work is an important milestone in the field, bringing future large-scale quantum applications closer to being implemented on these noisy, medium-sized quantum processors." ”
The reason why it is named "Zu ChongZhi", Zhu Xiaobo, co-corresponding author of the research team and professor of the Shanghai Research Institute of the University of Science and Technology of China, said that this is to commemorate Zu Chongzhi, an outstanding mathematician in China. Zu Chongzhi first calculated pi to the seventh decimal place, and his proposed "ancestral rate" made a significant contribution to mathematical research.
Pan Jianwei, Zhu Xiaobo, Peng Chengzhi and other leading teams have focused on superconducting quantum computing for many years, and the latest achievement of the "Zu Chong Zhi" is based on 12 bits of superconducting quantum chips and 24 bits of high-performance superconducting quantum processors.
However, the above research is still in the stage of scientific experiments, only demonstrating the function of the system, and has not yet achieved the so-called "quantum superiority", which is different from the previous Google quantum computer plane. Zhu Xiaobo told the first financial reporter that the team is currently carrying out relevant work to achieve "quantum superiority".
In September 2019, Google launched the 53-qubit computer "Planewood", which only takes 200 seconds to calculate a mathematical algorithm, and claims to achieve "quantum superiority" compared to the "peak" of the world's fastest supercomputer at that time.
An expert in the field of quantum computing, the first financial reporter, said: "Zu Chong zhi and plane wood are using superconducting qubits, but the tasks performed by Zu Chong zhi are relatively simple, and the requirements for manipulation accuracy are still lower than those of plane wood. ”
The competition between quantum computing and classical computing is a long-term dynamic process. The significant difference between quantum computers and classical computers is that the way traditional computers store data is 0 or 1, which is like a switch, only "on" and "off" two states; the way quantum computers store data is dependent on qubits, which can be any state between 0 and 1, which makes it faster.
Superconducting quantum computing has good process scalability, so it is widely considered to be one of the most likely solutions to first implement general-purpose quantum computing. In principle, quantum computers have ultra-fast parallel computing capabilities, and in the future, they are expected to provide acceleration capabilities higher than the exponential level of traditional computers through specific algorithms, and are expected to be used in weather forecasting, material design, code breaking, big data optimization, drug analysis and other fields.
However, industry insiders still said that quantum computing technology is still in its early stages and does not yet have industrial investment value. "In the current field of quantum technology, there are two mature application directions with investment value, one is the field of data encryption, and the other is sensing and quantum precision measurement." A person in the quantum technology industry told the first financial reporter.