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Chinese company Origin develops system software for quantum computers
- ‘Operating system’ could improve efficiency ‘by several times’ but an expert says it is too early to contemplate
- Technology could eventually replace supercomputers but quantum computing is still in its infancy
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A Chinese company says it has developed system software for quantum computers, but an expert questions if the effort is ahead of the current stage of hardware development.
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Xinhua reported on Monday that Origin Quantum, a Hefei-based start-up in the eastern province of Anhui, had released what it described as an “operating system” capable of improving the efficiency of quantum computers by “several times”.
Quantum computing, which uses quantum mechanics to store data and perform computations, is expected to eventually advance computing power way beyond the reach of existing supercomputers, but the technology is still in its infancy.
Google showed in 2019 its quantum computer prototype could complete a calculation in minutes that would have taken a supercomputer for 10,000 years.
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In December last year, a Chinese team led by Pan Jianwei of the University of Science and Technology of China, using a differently built quantum computer, solved a problem in 200 seconds that would have taken 2.5 billion years by China’s own TaihuLight supercomputer.
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Although prototypes are often crippled by errors, big tech companies like Google, IBM, Microsoft and Alibaba, which owns South China Morning Post, have ventured into the development of quantum computing. Some offered access to their prototypes on the internet, while others set up cloud computing platforms for access to different prototypes.
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