The reporter learned from the University of Science and Technology of China that recently, Pan Jianwei, Zhu Xiaobo, Peng Chengzhi and others successfully built a 105-bit superconducting quantum computing prototype "Zu Chongzhi No. 3", which can process quantum random circuit sampling problems a quadrillion times faster than the fastest supercomputer in the world, breaking the world record for quantum computing superiority of superconducting systems. On March 3, the internationally renowned academic journal Physical Review Letters published this achievement, and the reviewer believed that it "built the highest level of superconducting quantum computers at present."

Schematic diagram of the "Zu Chongzhi No. 3" chip. (Photo provided by the scientific research team)

Quantum computing is believed to be a key technology for the next generation of information revolution. The superiority of quantum computing is like a threshold, verifying the feasibility of quantum computers surpassing traditional computers. It is a prerequisite for quantum computing to have application value and a reflection of a country's quantum computing research capabilities.

In 2021, Pan Jianwei's team successfully built a 66-bit superconducting quantum computing prototype "Zu Chongzhi No. 2", which solved the quantum random circuit sampling problem more than 10 million times faster than the world's fastest supercomputer at the time. After more than three years of intensive research, their newly developed "Zu Chongzhi No. 3" contains 105 readable bits and 182 coupled bits, and many key performance indicators have been greatly improved.

After testing, "Zu Chongzhi No. 3" completed 83-bit 32-layer random circuit sampling. Using the current optimal classical algorithm as the comparison standard, the computing speed is a trillion times faster than the current fastest supercomputer, and a million times faster than the latest results publicly announced by Google in October 2024. It is the strongest quantum computing superiority in the current international superconducting system.

The mainstream view in the international academic community is that the development of quantum computing needs to go through "three steps": the first step is to achieve quantum computing superiority; the second step is to develop a quantum simulator that can manipulate hundreds of quantum bits to solve some problems that supercomputers are unable to solve and have great practical value; the third step is to greatly improve the manipulation accuracy, integration number and fault tolerance of quantum bits, and develop a programmable general-purpose quantum computer.

It is reported that the "Zu Chongzhi No. 3" scientific research team is accelerating exploration in many aspects such as quantum error correction, quantum entanglement, quantum simulation, and quantum chemistry.

"We are conducting research on surface code error correction with a code distance of 7. After making progress, we will expand it to 9 and 11, paving the way for the integration and manipulation of large-scale quantum bits," said Zhu Xiaobo.