Chinese Scientists Claim Record-Smashing Quantum Computing Breakthrough (scmp.com) 44
From the South China Morning Post:
Scientists in China say their latest quantum computer has solved an ultra-complicated mathematical problem within a millionth of a second — more than 20 billion years quicker than the world's fastest supercomputer could achieve the same task. The JiuZhang 3 prototype also smashed the record set by its predecessor in the series, with a one million-fold increase in calculation speed, according to a paper published on Tuesday by the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Letters...
The series uses photons — tiny particles that travel at the speed of light — as the physical medium for calculations, with each one carrying a qubit, the basic unit of quantum information... The fastest classical supercomputer Frontier — developed in the US and named the world's most powerful in mid-2022 — would take over 20 billion years to complete the same task, the researchers said.
The article claims they've increased the number of photons from 76 to 113 in the first two versions, improving to 255 in the latest iteration.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear for sharing the news.
The series uses photons — tiny particles that travel at the speed of light — as the physical medium for calculations, with each one carrying a qubit, the basic unit of quantum information... The fastest classical supercomputer Frontier — developed in the US and named the world's most powerful in mid-2022 — would take over 20 billion years to complete the same task, the researchers said.
The article claims they've increased the number of photons from 76 to 113 in the first two versions, improving to 255 in the latest iteration.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear for sharing the news.
Lovely exposition /s (Score:5, Funny)
"The series uses photons — tiny particles that travel at the speed of light [...]"
The hell you say.
Re: Lovely exposition /s (Score:2)
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"The series uses photons — tiny particles that travel at the speed of light [...]"
Or waves...
And if you know they're tiny, then I betting you don't know much about their momentum.
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Sad state that they felt the need to spell that out. I wouldn't mind seeing a survey of the general population, or at least the article's targeted audience, about their understanding of photons and light. And just the equivalence, not even the whole particle/wave thing. I'm afraid it wouldn't be reassuring science-education wise.
Re:Lovely exposition /s (Score:5, Funny)
Wait until I tell you that H2O particles are as wet as water, and that electrons are as shocking as electricity!
Looking For Scientific Proof Of This (Score:3)
But can these results be reproduced elsewhere?
Isn't that a critical step in scientific proof that a process does wht it claims to do?
Re: Looking For Scientific Proof Of This (Score:2)
Sure, if someone else builds an identical computer.
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Posting the results through Joe Biden's TwitX account would also be good proof of a quantum breakthrough.
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Posting the results through Joe Biden's TwitX account would also be good proof of a quantum breakthrough.
Would that be Left TwitX or Right TwitX [howstuffworks.com]?
IDK. Trump seems to be a better demonstration of the Uncertainty Principle [wikipedia.org] -- one can see where he is or where he's going, but never both...
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Except, with Trump, the product of the uncertainty in position and the uncertainty in direction is greater than or equal to the reciprocal of Planck's constant over 4 times Pi.
Re: Looking For Scientific Proof Of This (Score:1)
Is that /(4*Pi) or (/4)*Pi?
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The regular equation is (Planck's constant)/(4.Pi), so this would be (4.Pi)/(Planck's constant).
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Sure, if someone else builds an identical computer.
Not necessarily. Many solutions are difficult to find but easy to verify.
NP-Complete problems have that property.
Prime factorization is an example. Factoring a 200-digit composite number into two 100-digit primes can take far longer than the lifetime of the universe. But once you've solved it, you can multiply the two factors in a microsecond to verify they are correct.
Re: Looking For Scientific Proof Of This (Score:1)
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What was the problem they solved?
Re:Looking For Scientific Proof Of This (Score:5, Funny)
If it takes a classical computer billions of years, I am thinking it's probably figuring out the US tax system.
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If it takes a classical computer billions of years, I am thinking it's probably figuring out the US tax system.
Oh you sweet, poor, deluded fool. :)
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Can't be. They fed it a solvable problem.
Re:Looking For Scientific Proof Of This (Score:4, Insightful)
The usual one for any of these claims, a synthetic problem artfully designed to be easy to solve for a quantum computer but near-impossible for a standard computer. In this case possibly an even more specialised one that's been artfully designed to be easy to solve for this very specific quantum computer.
That's actually the real trick with quantum computer research, not building the thing but coming up with the appropriate synthetic problem to make it look better than anyone else's synthetic-problem-solving quantum computer.
Re: Looking For Scientific Proof Of This (Score:1)
Sounds the same as any benchmark, frankly.
What problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I have a different bet: They hardcoded the result.
Re: What problem? (Score:1)
Why, because they're Chinese?
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Because they're programmers.
Re:What problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly. I want to see one of these things solve a problem that cannot have the word quantum in its problem statement.
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This happens a lot over there (Score:1, Insightful)
If this turns out to be exaggeration, it wouldn't be the first time. There's a culture of padding results over there. Always wait for independent verification of any science out of China.
Re: This happens a lot over there (Score:2, Interesting)
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Oh please, it's not different in the US. Some people think China isn't capable of doing anything, while in reality they gave a very good scientific community and are frontrunners in many sectors, like medical. It's precisely why the US tries to impose sanction on technology, but in reality that will only improve China's selfreliance and will get them ahead in a couple of years.
No disrespect intended, but the main problem now with Chinese research is that any good research that they do gets buried in the mass of horribly bad/fabricated "research" published and the impression left by the long history of China doing fabricated research. There also does not seem to be any mechanism by which Chinese Researchers who fabricate research are punished, unlike the US where several highly prominent scientists were removed from their positions after the bad research came to light.
So Chines
Wow another Chinese breakthrough huh? (Score:3)
Lost Trust (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lost Trust (Score:4)
The sad thing is this type of "research" is now popping up all over the world. Probably an unintended side-effect from open-access publishing. Don't get me wrong, classical journal publishers are evil and have a lot to answer for. But they at least did filter out low-quality stuff with some reliability.
Look at the problem (Score:2)
.. find it is "simulating" exactly the same quantum effects that happen naturally in this "computer". In other words: useless, meaningless.
Real stuff behind the article (Score:2)
The actual paper is in Physical Review Letters, which is pretty high in ranking for journals, but I can't find the article online yet.
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The problem was based on Gaussian boson sampling that simulates the behavior of light particles passing through a maze of crystals and mirrors.
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see also the blog entry of scott aaronson (already old, but it is about the same experiment):
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=... [scottaaronson.blog]
A group led by Jianwei Pan and Chao-Yang Lu, based mainly at USTC in Hefei, China, announced today that it achieved BosonSampling with 40-70 detected photons—up to and beyond the limit where a classical supercomputer could feasibly verify the results. (Technically, they achieved a variant called Gaussian BosonSampling: a generalization of what I called Scattershot BosonSampling
Claim (Score:3)
The Chinese are great at claiming lots of things. Proof on the other hand, hard to come by.
doi? (Score:2)
Simulating GBS on special purpose analog computer (Score:2)
When these schemes can actually be used to compute other things wake me up. Until then I'm sure you can also create devices that measure or manipulate single heavy atoms in ways that would take trillions of years to calculate on a classical computer if the computer was the size of the earth. That doesn't really mean all that much in terms of general usefulness.
Was it the correct answer? (Score:2)
Scientists in China say their latest quantum computer has solved an ultra-complicated mathematical problem within a millionth of a second — more than 20 billion years quicker than the world's fastest supercomputer could achieve the same task.
So how do we know it got the correct answer? Did they re-run the calculation and take the best two out of three and say that must be it?
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The only possible way to claim it got the correct answer is if the problem is to simulate itself, at which point it becomes circular.