The Chinese Communist Party recently claimed to have made a major breakthrough in quantum technology, with its “Nine Chapters” computer achieving the world’s leading computing power, computing 10 billion times faster than Google‘s quantum computer. Quantum computing is considered to be one of the most disruptive frontier technologies, with potential practical applications that include overturning the ubiquitous existing cryptographic system and rendering network passwords useless. Experts in the international quantum computer community are currently reviewing the data from the Chinese paper in question and questioning whether the Chinese computer is faster than Google’s.
China announced earlier this month that it has successfully built the world’s fastest and most powerful quantum computer in terms of computing power. The University of Science and Technology of China announced that a paper published in the journal Science by Pan Jianwei and others said their quantum computing prototype, “Nine Chapters,” took only 200 seconds to solve the mathematical algorithm Gaussian Boson sampling, compared with 600 million years for the world’s fastest supercomputer and 10 billion times faster than a similar computer from Google. . The official Chinese media called this a “milestone breakthrough” for China.
Quantum science is one of the greatest scientific revolutions in human history, and the first industrial revolution spawned by the discipline led to the invention of atomic energy, semiconductors, and a host of other major technologies that fundamentally changed the way humans live.
Scott Aaronson, a professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin who first proposed the Gaussian bosonic sampling theory, said the Chinese team’s research is another major breakthrough in proving that quantum computing transcends traditional methods. Professor Aaronson was one of the reviewers of the Chinese paper. He said even some of those who still have doubts about the paper are impressed by this success of Chinese scientists.
Cracking existing cryptosystems
While quantum computers can be used in many applications, one of the most compelling applications for the average person right now is that they can be used to break existing network encryption systems, said the renowned American expert on theoretical computing.
People enter their credit card numbers on the Web every time they buy something from Amazon, and they rely on public-key cryptosystems like RSA or Diffie Herman to secure their online purchases,” he said. And if you could build a quantum computer, you could break all the encryption that we use on the Internet today. As long as no one else knows about it, it’s a good thing for the people who had such a computer first. And, of course, that makes quantum computing of considerable interest to the military and intelligence agencies.”
Professor Aronson said that current network security is guaranteed by encryption techniques based on computational complexity, but the current system fails in the face of quantum computers that can easily compute huge amounts of data.
Peter Shor, a mathematician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, first demonstrated in 1994 that quantum computing is much faster than traditional computers, laying the theoretical foundation for cracking encryption algorithms. In an interview with the journal Nature at the end of October this year, Shor said it was only a matter of time before quantum computers threatened network encryption.
Although such a quantum computer is still far from appearing, but in view of the network encryption information can now be intercepted and stored, and then deciphered in the future security risks, the Chinese Information Society Quantum Information Branch released the first Chinese quantum security white paper on the 15th of this month, emphasizing the importance of dealing with future quantum computer threats, the development of “anti-quantum cryptography” in the post-quantum cryptography era.
The speed of “nine chapters” has been questioned
Google launched a quantum computer last September under the leadership of Professor John Martinis, a pioneer of quantum computers and professor at the University of California, which can far surpass the arithmetic power of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, the world’s first to achieve “quantum superiority”, considered a The quantum superiority” is considered a milestone advance. For a mathematical calculation that was almost impossible for a conventional computer, the Martinius team called “Hoverwood” gave the perfect answer in only 200 seconds. Even the world’s most powerful supercomputer at the time, “Summit”, would have taken about 10,000 years to perform the same calculation.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai compared the breakthrough at the time to the Wright brothers’ invention of the airplane, calling it a “Hello, world!” moment. moment.
Professor Martinis said that the Chinese team had built the very complex computer, a “beautiful” experiment. But Professor Martinis told Voice of America that he was skeptical of the claim that “Jiuzhang,” named after an ancient Chinese monograph on arithmetic, was 10 billion times faster than Google’s “Hanging Tree.
He said, “Now that others are thinking seriously about it, we don’t know if that assertion is really true. I would say that this is a classic scientific question, and it sounds like you might be able to make a certain assertion, but you have to be very careful about analyzing this computer to see if the conclusion is really correct. “
Professor Martinis said that Google’s computer is very sensitive to errors and doesn’t allow any of them to happen, so this is a very strong evidence that the complexity of their computer is correct. The Chinese computer, on the other hand, still seems to be able to have signals appear even if there are errors.
Professor Martinis said that many colleagues in the quantum computer community are currently discussing the Chinese “nine chapters” further, and that the arguments for this latest quantum advantage are still inconclusive. Another obvious disadvantage of the “Nine Chapters” is that it is not a “programmable” computer, he said.
U.S.-China quantum game
On the same day that Chinese scientists published a paper in the journal Science announcing that they had successfully built the Nine Chapters, a team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab and other research institutions also announced that U.S. scientists had achieved the first sustained long-range quantum teleportation. The paper, published in the journal Physical Review, notes that the research could lay the foundation for a “viable quantum Internet” that could “transform many areas of data storage and computing.
Quantum technology has been one of the most competitive areas between the United States and China in recent years. China has made several references to quantum technology in a series of important decisions in all areas of design and technology in recent years. Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping also convened a so-called collective study of the Politburo in October this year to “deeply understand the significance of advancing the development of quantum science and technology, and strengthen the strategic planning and systematic layout of quantum science and technology development.”
The U.S. passed the National Quantum Initiative Act at the end of 2018, making quantum information science a key national strategic development goal, injecting $1.2 billion into quantum research and implementing quantum initiative projects. The U.S. Department of Energy and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy also announced in August this year the creation of the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Council, whose membership includes representatives from industry, universities, federal laboratories and other federal government agencies to drive quantum research and innovation.
Roger Grimes, a U.S. cybersecurity expert and former chief security architect at Microsoft, said Western society should quickly wake up to the potential of quantum technology, including the fact that quantum computers can break the traditional public key cryptographic system on which 90 percent of the Internet, including Internet banking, is currently built.
Who will build quantum computers powerful enough to break traditional public key cryptosystems is certainly one of the most intense competitions between the U.S., China, and perhaps Russia, among others,” he said. “
The day such a quantum computer emerges will be the day the world realizes the power of quantum computers, Grimes said. And it’s likely that we’ll hear about significant progress in this area within a year or two.
Recent Comments