Computational tasks that the Jiuzhang quantum computer can solve include mining and data mining, biological information, network analysis and chemical modeling research, the researchers said.
The research team, headed by Pan Jianwei, a physicist at the University of Science and Technology in China who is called the “Quantum Father” in the country, published the study in the journal Physical Review Letters.
“Our work is a step towards solving real computational problems using current medium-sized quantum computers,” the study team said.
“In the era of big data, the amount of global data is increasing exponentially, doubling every two years. It is meaningless if huge amounts of data are not mined,” said Pan Jianwei. Currently, the traditional development model of computers is limited, and supercomputers consume huge amounts of power. In Pan Jianwei’s view, the importance of “jiuzhang” lies in improving computing power without increasing power consumption.
The scientific team solved complex computer equations that posed a challenge to traditional computers by using more than 200,000 samples to solve the mathematical problem.
During the experiment, the researchers used, for the first time, a quantum computer to implement and speed up the solution of two algorithms — random search and simulated annealing — that are commonly used in the field of artificial intelligence.
It takes the world’s fastest classic supercomputer 700 seconds to analyze each computational sample, which means it would take nearly 5 years for the algorithm to process the same number of samples.
However, the quantum computer Jiuzhang solved the algorithm in less than a second.
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In traditional computing, a bit represents either a zero or a one as the basic unit of information, while a qubit goes one step further in that a bit can represent either a zero or a one or both at the same time – which are the simplest arithmetic expressions in quantum mechanics.
Because the basic information of a quantum computer can represent all possibilities at once, it is theoretically much faster and more powerful than the ordinary computers we use in our daily lives.
The Jiuzhang quantum computer, named after a Chinese text on mathematics dating back about 2,000 years, uses photons of light as a physical medium for computation. Unlike other quantum computers, it does not need to operate at extremely low temperatures and can operate stably for a longer time.
However, quantum computers only work in very cold and isolated environments to avoid confusion and error, because the size of the subatomic particles on which the quantum computer depends in its operations is very fragile and its life is very short.
It is noteworthy that the company “Google” announced the development of a quantum computer capable of calculating a certain amount of information in only 200 seconds, so that supercomputers cannot calculate this same amount of information except within 10 thousand years.
However, the Chinese “Juzhang” quantum computer is an achievement on the road to universal quantum computing, also known as “quantum supremacy”, which guarantees a huge speed in this field.
No conventional computer can perform the same task in a reasonable amount of time, and it is unlikely that improvements in the algorithm or in classical computing hardware will exceed that speed.
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