Recently, China has welcomed its first 500+ qubit superconducting quantum computing chip, a milestone achievement that signifies a significant breakthrough for China in the field of quantum computing.

This superconducting quantum computing chip, named "Xiaohong," was meticulously developed by the Quantum Information and Quantum Technology Innovation Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and successfully delivered to Guo Dun Quantum. This chip, while integrating over 500 qubits, is expected to reach the performance of chips used by international mainstream quantum computing cloud platforms such as IBM in terms of key indicators such as qubit lifetime, gate fidelity, gate depth, and readout fidelity, fully meeting the needs of a thousand-qubit control and measurement system verification.

The advent of the "Xiaohong" chip is of great significance for promoting the development of large-scale quantum computing control and measurement systems. It will be used to verify the thousand-qubit control and measurement system independently developed by Guo Dun Quantum, which has an integration level more than 10 times higher than the previous generation, with core components designed for domestic use, both improving control precision and significantly reducing costs. The successful verification of this system will undoubtedly lay a solid foundation for further development of quantum computing in China.

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It is worth noting that the development of the "Xiaohong" chip is not an easy task. The development of superconducting quantum computing chips requires overcoming many technical challenges, including how to simultaneously improve the quality and quantity of qubits to truly enhance the performance of the chip.

Dr. Wang Zhen, a Ph.D. from the University of Science and Technology of China and Deputy General Manager of China Telecom Quantum Group, stated that the cloud access of a 500+ qubit quantum computer can efficiently support users from various fields in conducting research on problems and algorithms of practical value, accelerating the application of quantum computing in real scenarios and leading the rapid development of the quantum computing ecosystem.

So, what exactly is a quantum chip, and what remarkable applications can it bring us? Looking to the future, what kind of development prospects will it have? Why are many companies at home and abroad so fond of it? Next, let's unveil the mystery of quantum chips together.

01

What are the differences between quantum chips and ordinary chips?

As the core part of a quantum computer, a quantum chip is the hardware device that performs quantum computing and quantum information processing. However, since quantum computing follows the laws and properties of quantum mechanics, quantum chips differ significantly from traditional integrated circuit chips in terms of materials, computing power, process maturity, information processing methods, and application fields.From a materials perspective, the core material of traditional chips is primarily silicon. Silicon is also one of the commonly used materials for quantum chips, and the purity requirements for silicon in quantum chips are higher compared to classical chips. In addition, III-V group compounds (such as gallium arsenide, indium phosphide) are also important materials in the manufacturing of quantum chips. They possess high electron mobility and high carrier concentration, making them more suitable for the fabrication of quantum bits, and their energy level structures are more easily controlled. Beyond these, quantum chips may also involve superconducting materials, and graphene is also considered a potential material for quantum chips.

From a design standpoint, similar to the design of traditional integrated circuit chips, the design of quantum chips also relies on design and simulation software. However, due to the different circuit characteristics from semiconductor chips, the principles and structural design of quantum chip circuits follow a completely different logic, and existing semiconductor chip design or simulation software cannot be used directly; new development is required.

In terms of manufacturing processes, the fabrication of quantum chips is even more complex, especially when dealing with superconducting materials or special semiconductor materials, which require higher process precision and stricter environmental control. Nevertheless, superconducting quantum bits are less affected by material defects, and with mature nanofabrication techniques, mass production can be achieved.

Regarding computational power, quantum chips have a distinct advantage. Taking superconducting quantum bits as an example, they have long coherence times, fast operation speeds, and high fidelity, enabling thousands of operations. The information processing methods and logical structures of the two also confer different computational capabilities. Conventional chips use binary digits (0 and 1) to represent information, with each bit existing in one of two states. In contrast, quantum chips use quantum bits (qubits) to represent information, where qubits can be in multiple states simultaneously, known as superposition, and they interact with each other through entanglement, making their interactions more complex and powerful. This characteristic allows quantum chips to handle complex problems and perform certain specific tasks with greater efficiency and accuracy compared to traditional chips.

From a security standpoint, quantum computers can encrypt and decrypt without revealing the original information. This means that quantum computers have tremendous potential in the field of information security, offering us a more secure network environment.

There are also significant differences in application areas between the two. Conventional chips are widely used in the computation, control, and storage of modern electronic devices, while quantum chips, due to their unique quantum effects and superposition computing capabilities, have broad application prospects in the fields of quantum computing, quantum simulation, and quantum communication. For instance, quantum computing can play a vital role in cryptography, optimization problems, and drug development.

Similar to modern large-scale integrated circuits, semiconductor quantum chips have good scalability and integrability, and are considered one of the best candidate systems for realizing large-scale practical quantum computing in the future. Major technology giants and companies are rushing to stake their claims and compete in this field, conducting research and development in the hope of securing a favorable position in the future quantum computing race.

02

Top Ten Advances in Global Quantum Computing in 2023

Globally, quantum computing technology has received unprecedented attention and investment, and the development of quantum computers has become one of the key directions for major countries worldwide to achieve breakthroughs in cutting-edge scientific and technological fields.IBM Unveils First 1000-Qubit Quantum Chip

In December 2023, IBM unveiled its first quantum computer with over 1000 qubits at the annual IBM Quantum Summit held in New York. Following a roadmap for quantum computing that has seen the number of qubits approximately double each year, IBM introduced the chip named Condor, featuring 1121 superconducting qubits arranged in a honeycomb pattern.

IBM Launches 133-Qubit Quantum Heron

At the summit, IBM also introduced its latest quantum system, IBM Quantum SystemTwo, based on the Heron chip, and made significant updates to the development roadmap for quantum systems. The Heron boasts 133 qubits and tunable couplers, offering a 3-5 times performance improvement over IBM's previous flagship 127-qubit Eagle processor, and significantly reducing crosstalk. Notably, Heron employs an innovative modular architecture based on tunable couplers, which is radically different from previous quantum processor architectures.

University of Maryland's Aaron Smeeno Team Develops the "Longest-Lived" Quantum Bit

In May 2023, the Aaron Smeeno team at the University of Maryland demonstrated that flux qubits can maintain quantum properties for a longer duration. In their latest research, the Smeeno team created flux qubits by laying extremely fine titanium and aluminum wires in a special configuration on a sapphire chip, forming many channels between rows of superconducting "islands." These fine wires are superconducting only at extremely cold temperatures, so they are stored in a refrigerator close to absolute zero.

When the chip is powered, the special layout of the wires and their superconducting properties allow it to have several different quantum states, each of which can be used to encode information as 1s and 0s or superpositions of both. The research team also measured the coherence time of the chip to reveal the "lifetime" of the quantum bits.

Smeeno pointed out that the coherence time of the best transmission qubits is only a few microseconds, while the coherence time of the flux qubits is approximately 1.48 milliseconds. They can also change the state of the qubits with a fidelity of 99.991%, making it one of the most reliable quantum bits available.

Researchers from the University of Sussex and Universal Quantum Achieve Quantum Bit Transfer on a ChipIn February 2023, researchers from the University of Sussex and UniversalQuantum demonstrated how they used a new powerful technology, which they call "UQ Connect," to link qubits with electric fields, enabling them to move from one quantum computing microchip module to another at unprecedented speeds and precision. This allows the chips to be pieced together like a puzzle, creating more powerful quantum computers. The University of Sussex and UniversalQuantum team successfully transmitted qubits with a success rate of 99.999993% and a connection rate of 2424/s, both of which are world records and several orders of magnitude better than previous solutions.

In March 2023, the research team led by Academician Yu Dapeng from the Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering at Southern University of Science and Technology, in collaboration with Assistant Researcher Xu Yuan's group from the Superconducting Laboratory, Professor Zheng Shibiao from Fuzhou University, and Professor Sun Luyan from Tsinghua University, achieved a breakthrough in the field of quantum error correction based on superconducting quantum circuit systems. The joint team extended the storage time of quantum information through real-time repetitive quantum error correction technology, surpassing the break-even point for the first time internationally, demonstrating the advantage of quantum error correction.

In March 2023, NVIDIA launched the world's first GPU-accelerated quantum computing system—NVIDIA DGX Quantum. This system combines the world's most powerful accelerated computing platform built with NVIDIA Grace Hopper superchips and the CUDA Quantum open-source programming model, along with the world's most advanced quantum control platform, OPX, built by Quantum Machines. This combination allows researchers to build ultra-strong applications that combine quantum computing with advanced classical computing, thereby promoting the development of calibration, control, quantum error correction, and hybrid algorithms.

In May 2023, Quantinuum announced the launch of the quantum computing system H2 and successfully created and manipulated non-Abelian anyons, taking a key step towards building a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

In July 2023, a team of scientists at Quantinuum, using three logical qubits on the Quantinuum H1 quantum computer, employed an early fault-tolerant device algorithm—Stochastic Quantum Phase Estimation—to successfully calculate the ground state energy of the hydrogen molecule. The uniqueness of the project lies in its incorporation of error detection as part of the algorithm.When the code detects a quantum bit that generates an error during the computation process, the code will immediately terminate the calculation, thereby saving quantum resources.

IBM Q integrates Q-CTRL error suppression technology with zero configuration to achieve a "quantum system performance surge"

In November 2023, IBM Quantum integrated the error suppression technology software Q-CTRLEmbedded from the quantum computing startup Q-CTRL into IBM Quantum's pay-as-you-go plan to enhance the practicality and performance of quantum computing. Peer-reviewed research and system testing have proven that the complexity of quantum algorithms that quantum systems can run has increased by 10 times, and the success rate of quantum algorithms has improved by more than 1,000 times.

Harvard University creates the highest ever 48Q logical qubits

In December 2023, the Harvard research team, dedicated to the Medium-Scale Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (ONISQ) program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), created the first quantum circuit with logical qubits in history. The quantum circuit contains about 48 Rydberg atom logical qubits, the highest number in the world.

Quantum computing becomes the focus of national layout

Quantum computing hardware technology is mainly divided into two categories: one is the artificial particle route represented by superconductors and silicon semiconductors, and the other is the natural particle route represented by ion traps, optical quantum, and neutral atoms. The development of quantum computing hardware is currently in a stage of parallel development of various technological routes and open competition.

Chinese technology giants Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and Huawei have established quantum laboratories through cooperation with research institutions and other means, laying out fields such as quantum processor hardware and quantum computing cloud platforms; while the startup company, Origin Quantum, is exploring in areas such as quantum processor hardware, open-source software platforms, and quantum computing cloud services. In the field of quantum communication, domestic companies are deploying, with the three major operators on one hand helping the application of quantum communication to land, and on the other hand continuously innovating application technology and improving the security standards of industries such as communication.

In addition, in terms of total investment, the global quantum information investment scale reached 38.6 billion US dollars in 2023, of which China's total investment reached 15 billion US dollars, ranking first in the world, showing the strength and emphasis of China's financial investment and attention to the development of quantum science and technology.This year, China has been making continuous new progress in the field of quantum computing, and the pace of industrialization has significantly accelerated. In addition to the release of "Xiaohong," China's independently developed third-generation superconducting quantum computer "Origin Wukong" has been put into operation, attracting more than 5 million visits from around the world; Beijing Bosee Quantum Technology Co., Ltd. has released a new generation of coherent optical quantum computers with 550 computational quantum bits.

On March 29, China Telecom Quantum Group was included in the first batch of enterprises determined by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council to set sail, which will accelerate the construction of new security infrastructures resistant to quantum computing, and actively promote the industrialization of quantum communication and the practical application of quantum computing.

However, in reality, there is still a significant gap between China's development in the field of quantum computing and that of the United States, especially in core technologies such as quantum chips and ultra-low temperature equipment.

As one of the main directions for the development of quantum technology, quantum computing has become a hot pursuit for many countries due to its potential for leapfrog development in computing power. The United States has a clear advantage in the quantum computing industry chain, and the government's high attention and strong support for quantum computing have promoted the growth of the number of enterprises, including representative enterprises such as IBM, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. The United States maintains a leading position in multiple fields such as superconducting, ion traps, and optical quantum, and its scientific research innovation and cooperation are active, with technology level and leadership ability at the forefront globally.

Germany, France, and other European countries show a positive trend in the development of the quantum computing ecosystem.

The German government's quantum technology action plan aims to become a global leader in quantum technology, providing funding and strategic frameworks. Germany ranks first in the world in the number of quantum computing companies, with advanced technical capabilities, especially in the fields of ion traps and neutral atoms. However, compared with the United States, there is still a technical gap.

France strongly supports quantum computing through documents such as the National Quantum Technology Strategy. However, compared with the United States and China, there is still a gap in investment and output, and the hardware and software capabilities are slightly lower than those of Germany.

The United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, and other countries have also made great progress in the development of quantum computing. The UK government's scientific and technological framework and national quantum strategy aim to consolidate its position as a technological superpower, but compared with the United States and China, it still has defects in scale and type. Japan emphasizes practical and industrial applications through its Quantum Future Industry Innovation Strategy, but there are still some shortcomings in quantum software and services. Canada has launched a national quantum strategy, which is strongly supported by the government, especially in the field of photonic quantum technology, although it is slightly behind the United States in terms of hardware and software capabilities.When was the commercial inception year of quantum computing?

Quantum computing holds significant scientific importance and immense potential for application. On one hand, under the premise of Moore's Law, the evolution of silicon-based integrated circuit technology is nearing its physical limits, and quantum computing is expected to be one of the key solutions for a leap in computing power in the post-Moore era. On the other hand, as a new type of computing power, quantum computing has a significant advantage over traditional computers in terms of data processing speed and capability, and is expected to become an important engine for accelerating the development of AI in the future.

The "14th Five-Year Plan" mentions quantum technology multiple times. The 2024 government work report explicitly proposes to open up new tracks such as quantum technology and life sciences, and to create a number of pilot zones for future industries.

On April 24, the Beijing Municipal Economic and Information Bureau and the Beijing Municipal Communications Administration jointly issued the "Beijing Municipal Implementation Plan for the Construction of Computational Infrastructure (2024-2027)". The plan proposes to support the development and breakthrough of new technological routes such as quantum chips, as well as the research and development of advanced technologies like quantum computing. The "Shandong Province Implementation Plan for High-Quality Development of Computational Infrastructure" also proposes to actively deploy new computing powers such as quantum computing, relying on the national wide-area quantum secure communication backbone network, to promote the combination of quantum encryption application technology and cloud computing technology, and to explore the large-scale application of quantum communication.

With the continuous evolution of quantum computing algorithms, quantum computing and quantum communication, relying on their high confidentiality, low latency, and high reliability, are gradually expanding their application scenarios from special scenarios to civilian consumer-level fields, thereby broadening the market space.

ICV data shows that, combining the physical and algorithmic foundations required for quantum computing, quantum computing is expected to achieve large-scale commercial use within 10-15 years. According to IDC data, the global quantum computing technology market (including hardware, software, and as-a-service solutions) was valued at $1.1 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow to around $7.6 billion by 2027. It is projected that the commercial inception year of quantum computing will be around 2030, with market demand exceeding $100 billion, and a compound annual growth rate of 79.72% from 2022 to 2030.