China builds world’s fastest programmable quantum computers that outperform ‘classical’ computers

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Chinese scientists claim to have built the world’s fastest programmable quantum computers, which appear to crack problems that are currently not feasible for ”classical” non-quantum computers. Their programmable superconducting quantum computer, named after a 5th-century mathematician, is 10 million times faster than the world’s fastest supercomputer, the scientists said. In photonic quantum computers, light’s energy units, the photons, are manipulated with mirrors, beam splitters, and phase shifters, while in the latter the state of the qubits is manipulated using an electromagnetic field. For instance, in photonic quantum computers, the scientists said, single photons arrive as input in parallel to an optical circuit in which components like beam splitters cause the photons to interfere, causing their states to change, and they emerge from multiple output ports.