So-called quantum supremacy is a development milestone: quantum machines being able to perform a calculation that is beyond the reach of the most powerful conventional supercomputers.
In Beijing, researchers at the Institute of Theoretical Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences put this to the test by repeating Google’s experiment using 60 graphics processors – Nvidia V100s and A100s – usually used for artificial intelligence tasks. “The goal of Google’s quantum supremacy experiments was to obtain a large number of samples achieving a high enough [accuracy] for the Sycamore circuits... such that the task is intractable for classical computing,” the Beijing researchers wrote.
But the researchers, led by Professor Zhang Pan, acknowledged that the Sycamore remained “much faster” in processing quantum calculations, and that classical supercomputers were limited in their ability to scale up and handle more complex tasks. She said there was often a trade-off between complexity and accuracy in the pursuit of quantum supremacy. The more computing steps and number of quantum bits – the subatomic particles that form a basic information unit – the harder it becomes for a classical supercomputer to do the job. The quantum system also becomes a lot less accurate.
That project was led by Pan Jianwei, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, who revealed more details of Beijing’s quantum technology plans for the next five years in an interview with the officialHe said the priority was to develop “actually useful” quantum simulators to solve problems of practical interest that could not be done with supercomputers, without elaborating.
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