1208 Quantum Supremacy
Even though a month had pa.s.sed since the news of quantum computer technology breakthroughs, Professor Arik from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory still did not give up his original opinion.
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in Lu Zhou’s ability.
However, he just couldn’t imagine that it was possible to achieve more than 100 qubits without mastering quantum storage technology.
Google’s approach was now to focus on software, which was the popular quantum annealing algorithm.
However, even the best brains at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory could only come up with an experimental quantum computer of 80-90 qubits.
As for 524…
That was too unrealistic.
He viewed this story as a political scam. After all, in his opinion, this wasn’t the first time the idiots in Was.h.i.+ngton had been blackmailed by a third world country with weird schemes.
Obviously, by demonstrating quantum supremacy, China would put pressure on the International Information System Security Certification Consortium to promote their quantum encryption algorithms and quantum optical cables.
Hypothetically, if there were no quantum computer, both the quantum encryption algorithm and quantum communication would be completely unnecessary.
The slow, traditional supercomputers would take billions of years just to crack open the Fed’s encryption.
However, quantum computers were different.
Its exponentially increasing computing power was something everyone was scared of.
Professor Arik brought his breakfast to the laboratory as usual. He sat at his desk and was about to open his email to check if there was a new paper review invitation.
His colleague, Dr. Cecil, was walking back from the coffee machine with two cups of coffee. Cecil placed one of the cups on his desk.
“Do you want some coffee?”
“Sure, thank you.”
“You’re welcome… Speaking of which, the Star Voyage One construction completes today. Are you paying attention to this matter?”
“I have been paying attention, but their performance has disappointed me.” Professor Arik took a sip and said, “It doesn’t look like the Jinling Inst.i.tute for Advanced Study plans on publis.h.i.+ng a paper. Except for a summary paper, there is nothing on the quantum computer.”
Dr. Cecil nodded.
“Oh, I see… That is a bit strange.”
Professor Arik looked at him and said, “Do you know anything?”
“I don’t know if it counts, but I saw it on their official website.” Dr. Cecil thought for a while and continued, “Apparently, they plan on proving Star Voyage One’s computing power by calculating digits of pi.”
Arik took a sip of coffee and chuckled pleasantly.
“Haha, how many digits are they going for?”
“I think ten to the power of 100.”
The second Arik heard this, he nearly choked on his coffee.
Ten to the power of 100?!
Are these motherf*ckers crazy!
“Yeah, good luck to them, they’re going to be calculating for the rest of their lives!”
Arik put the coffee cup aside and used the mouse to open his web browser.
He didn’t care about the Star Voyage One opening ceremony.
However, he was surprised that they had prepared a demonstration for the opening ceremony.
He thought the Chinese would continue to “bluff and lie” forever. He didn’t expect this lie to be exposed already.
Calculating pi to 10^100 digits?
Haha! What a joke!
I’m not going to be merciless when they fail. They did this to themselves.
The D-Wave 3X is about to be completed soon. If those Chinese people think that they only need to calculate a trillion more digits and fake the rest, then…
I will make them pay for their lies.
Even though it was unrealistic for the D-Wave 3X to calculate pi to 10^100 digits, 10^15 digits was not a problem.
However, after Arik opened his browser and looked at the computer screen, his body froze.
He wasn’t even on the Star Sky Technology website.
He saw some eye-catching headlines on the front page.
[A revolutionary computer! Star Voyage One creates a new Guinness world record for calculating pi!
[—The Los Angeles Times.]
Arik: “???”
…
Obviously, Arik was not the only one who was shocked by this news.
Immediately after the new record was included in the online Guinness Book of World Records, discussion about the Star Voyage One began to explode on Facebook and Twitter.
[Isn’t Google also working on quantum computers? Why haven’t they achieved anything?]
[I am very disappointed at the White House. Even when we faced the Soviet Union, we still had the upper hand! But now, first controllable fusion energy, then the lunar s.p.a.ce station… We’re being surpa.s.sed.]
[The approval of East Asia Communications’ acquisition of SubCom is the stupidest decision ever! This is how we lost our advantage!]
What was amazing was not only that Star Voyage One was able to calculate pi to 10^100 digits, but that it only took Star Voyage One one minute!
What was the significance of this?
It was difficult to describe.
One could make a comparison to let people understand how terrifyingly powerful this computing power was.
Prior to this, Google engineers spent 121 days using 25 virtual machines to complete the 2.7 x 10^12 record. Not to mention that they were using an algorithm optimized for calculating pi!
This was actually more complicated than it looked.
Soon after, a professor of information engineering from the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology named Griffin stepped up and published his views on this matter on his personal blog.
Or rather, his personal warnings.
[With current computer technology, it is almost impossible to calculate pi to 10^100 digits. Even if you use the latest Dragon series carbon-based chips, you would need a server the size of the White House and a professional team of at least ten people to design a set of specially customized algorithms for calculating pi. Then, you would need at least a few hundred years for the computer to do the calculations.
[If you are using the Summit supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, then you would have to wait for thousands of years to calculate even a tiny fraction of what the Star Voyage One calculated within one minute.
[I must warn our experts at the United States Department of Defense, as well as information security experts, that although the Cold War has long pa.s.sed, a new crisis has emerged.
[Quantum supremacy will become something more terrifying than nuclear weapons. Due to the powerful information processing capabilities of quantum computers, those who have access to them only need a few small satellites or high-alt.i.tude drones to take down an entire city.
[Nuclear missiles? Intercontinental missiles? We countermeasures for physical weapons, but not for quantum computers.]