Chinese scientists have created the world's first light-based quantum(量子) computer. It's called Jiuzhang.
The name Jiuzhang comes from an old Chinese math text. Compared with today's best supercomputers, Jiuzhang can work out 100, 000 billion times faster. For example, it takes Jiuzhang only 200 seconds to finish a task that Fugaku, the world's fastest supercomputer, would take about 600 million years to finish.
Quantum machines amazing computing power results from their basic building blocks, called quantum bits, or qubits(量子比特), according to the University of Science and Technology of China. Classical computers usually present data(数据) as either 0 or 1. I low ever, quantum computers use qubits to process data, Qubits can be 0, 1 or anything in between. As a result, as the number of qubits that are being used increases, the computing ability of quantum computers increases, too.
According to Pan Jianwei, one of the main researchers behind Jiuzhang, quantum computing has already become anuria of competition in the world. With Jiuzhang, China has entered the race. Compared to Google's qubit computer, Jiuzhang is easier to make and maintain（维护). Google's qubit computer must be kept at a very cold temperature. But Jiuzhang can work at room temperature.
In the future, Jiuzhang might be used for machine learning and other fields. Lu Chaoyang, another key researcher behind Jiuzhang, told China Daily that scientists will keep increasing Jiuzhang's computing power.
