Not to be outdone by Google, Alibaba and Baidu are officially involved in the quantum computer race

Google announced on Wednesday that if it took its quantum supercomputer time to prepare it, it would only take 2.5 days to calculate the math problem that Google thought “took 10,000 years to complete”. .

And two of China’s tech giants, Alibaba and Baidu, don’t want to give up in this race.

Alibaba may be best known as the company behind e-commerce that dominates China, but it also provides cloud computing services and has worked on quantum computing for years. In 2015, Alibaba officially opened its first research center in this field.

Alibaba Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Jeff Zhang introduced the Hanguang 800 chip in September. Hanguang 800 is developed by DAMO Academy (founded by Alibaba in late 2017) and T-Head, Alibaba’s specialized semiconductor unit.

The Alibaba quantum computing laboratory was founded by Alibaba’s cloud computing unit and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), which is also the first company of its kind in Asia.

But they were still left behind when it started, the same year they were founded, scientists at Google claimed that they had found a quantum algorithm 100 million times faster than the equivalent classical algorithm. .

Undeterred, Alibaba has poured $ 15 billion into next-generation technology research, including AI and quantum technology.

In 2018, Alibaba launched quantum cloud computing, including a quantum processor with 11 quantum bits (qubits). It is the second most powerful quantum computer after IBM’s 20 qubit machine.

Shi Yaoyun, the chief quantum technology scientist at Alibaba Cloud, said at the time that the service was for testing processors and developing quantum tools and software. The company also started investing in chip technology as well as AI and quantum technology.

Baidu also doesn’t want to lose part of the quantum “pie”, which opened its own quantum computer research center in 2018.

The lab, supported by Professor Duan Runyao, said he wanted to turn Baidu’s Quantum Computation Institute into a world-class organization by 2023.

Duan also plans to gradually integrate quantum computing into other aspects of Baidu’s business from search engines to self-driving vehicles.

Baidu has tested the Apollo self-driving car project, but the giant is still new to the “quantum technology game”.

The Chinese government also promotes quantum research activities by building a National Laboratory of Quantum Technology worth US $ 10 billion in Hefei City.

In 2017, China had nearly double the number of patent applications for quantum technology compared to the United States, according to market analysis firm Patinformatics.

The country also launched its first quantum satellite, called Micius, which allows making quantized encrypted video calls between Beijing and Vienna (the capital and also a state of Austria). At the same time using a combination of satellite transmission and fiber optic lines designed to transmit quantum encrypted information.

So far, Western companies have been winning by adding as many qubits as possible to their computers.

Google’s test of supreme quantum dominance was run on a 54-qubit processor called “Sycamore”, but last year it revealed a 72-qubit chip.

IBM claims it will soon provide a 53-qubit quantum computer for its customers.

But qubits aren’t everything. Experts point out that to be able to perform calculations correctly, qubits need to work perfectly.

In fact, work often has lots of bugs to fix and the more qubits it is, the harder it is to fix them.