The Chinese started building a quantum computer

China’s largest Internet holding company Alibaba Group, together with the experts of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have begun to develop a quantum computer. The main difference from the usual computer this is that he is able to spend millions of calculations per second. According to the publication “Peiching tsinnyan bao”, the computing power of the machine will be a trillion times greater than current supercomputers.

Today, Alibaba Group is the first Chinese company to start the development of a quantum computer after the American companies Google, Microsoft and IBM. The company is interested in the project only from the scientific point of view. Alibaba Group Technical Director Wang Jian said that the company has not yet fully understand, “how you can use this technology for commercial purposes.”

According to the academician Pan Jianwei, support for private capital is very important in the process of building a quantum computer: “Despite the existing research in this area, the best minds of the Chinese leadership to entice Google and Microsoft. This complicates the process of development of this technology in China.” According to the forecasts of the academician, Chinese experts can create a supercomputer in the next 10-15 years.

The main difference between this computer from the classic is that it is able to carry out millions of calculations per second (classic – only one). Conventional computer encodes information using a combination of zeros and ones, the so-called binary code. A unit of information is called a bit. In a quantum computer armed with qubits, which can take a value of zero and one at the same time, due to the state of superposition. This gives a great advantage of quantum computers.