The first dual core and 200 qubits on the planet is now ready

The pulse between the US and China in the field of technology goes beyond semiconductors and the artificial intelligence (AI). The US leads the industry quantum computersand, although probably not all the achievements that Chinese companies and research centers have achieved have transcended, those that we know of reflect that China is also a power in quantum computing. In fact, these two countries have achieved notable milestones over the past few years.

The quantum supremacy is one of those that share, but if we stick to quantum telecommunications China is intractable. In addition, the country led by Xi Jinping is one step away from having indigenous superconducting quantum computers. In recent years, Chinese companies and research centers have been forced to buy high-density microwave connectivity modules abroad, mainly in Japan. This dependency is about to come to an end, if it has not already done so.

Be that as it may, the latest milestone for this Asian country has been signed by CAS Cold Atom Technology, a Chinese quantum technology company based in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. And it has presented the world’s first quantum computer with neutral atoms and double core: the Hanyuan-2. We have known for a long time that China is very advanced in superconducting qubits, but now we also know that it is a competitive country in qubits of neutral atoms.

Hanyuan-2 is a unique machine

Neutral atom quantum computers are an alternative to quantum machines with superconducting qubits and ion traps, and are still in an experimental phase. Those responsible for the design of Hanyuan-2 have confirmed that this device incorporates two independent and complete arrays of qubits of neutral atoms. It integrates 100 atoms of rubidium-85 and another 100 of rubidium-87 to build a dual-core system that implements a total of 200 qubits.

Both matrices can work in parallel (hence this machine has 200 qubits) in order to increase its calculation capacity. However, and this is very interesting, one of them can operate as the main nucleus and the other can act as an auxiliary nucleus to build logical qubits. more stable and less sensitive to noise. An important note: logical qubits represent a way to overcome the difficulty involved in using hardware or physical qubits, which are extremely sensitive to noise, and therefore prone to making errors.

Each logical qubit is abstractly built on several physical or hardware qubits, so that a single logical qubit encodes a single qubit of quantum information, but with redundancy. It is precisely this redundancy that allows us to detect and correct the errors that are present in physical qubits. Until very recently the number of hardware qubits needed to implement a single error-immune logical qubit made error correction infeasible in practice, but this limitation has been lifted thanks to the work of IBM and CAS Cold Atom Technology, among other companies.

Although the quantum computer that you can see in the cover image of this article is the Hanyuan-1, its successor also has a conventional design. In fact, both look much more like a classical computer than a quantum machine with superconducting qubits or ion traps. What is truly striking about Hanyuan-2 is that does not need a cryogenic cooling environment to function. Instead, it uses a small laser cooling system with a total consumption of less than 7 kilowatts, which allows it to be installed in practically any space without extraordinary technical requirements.

Image | CAS Cold Atom Technology

More information | Global Times

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