Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

In the past 10 days, there has been a sudden increase in news about quantum science.

With the award of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, three physicists who validated quantum entanglement experiments won a prize of 10 million Swedish kronor. Subsequently, the announcement in Europe that a quantum computing network would be built in 2030 sparked widespread discussion.

Prior to this, foreign technology giants such as Google, IBM and Intel have successively launched their own quantum computers and related products. Domestically, Ali, Baidu and other enterprises have also launched their layouts around quantum computing. At the same time, capital has begun to pay more attention to start-up quantum computing companies, and at least nine start-ups have received capital support so far this year, according to incomplete statistics from Sina Technology.

However, while attracting attention, some money hype tricks under the name of "quantum technology" have also begun to emerge, disrupting and undermining the development of the entire industry. In the process from the laboratory to the real world, the development of quantum technology still faces many challenges.

The control of qubits has reached the tipping point of industrialization. For the general public, what does quantum technology have to do with us? What are the specific cases in life? Little is known about the answers to these questions. Unconsciously, the development of quantum technology has gone through the first stage, and now it is on the eve of the second quantum revolution.

In fact, from atomic bombs to semiconductor transistors, from nuclear magnetic resonance and laser technology, the invention and creation of these cutting-edge technological achievements can be called the masterpiece of the first round of quantum revolution. According to Duan Runyao, director of Baidu Quantum Computing Research Institute, "at the very beginning, the atomic bomb was developed through quantum mechanical analysis and found that uranium material fission will produce huge energy." In addition, mobile phones and computers, which we can no longer live and work without, depend on the computing power needed to run, which is provided by transistors discovered based on electronic theory, which is also closely related to quantum. "

After the initial passive understanding and application of quantum science, today's quantum technology is also moving towards a new stage for the purpose of "controlling quantum". In this round of reform, the field of quantum science and technology, represented by quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum precision measurement, is becoming a new focus.

"the first quantum revolution, to put it bluntly, was the direct use of quantum mechanics. and the second quantum revolution will no longer be limited to this, it will rise to a more microscopic level, directly manipulating a single atom or system, and then do what we want to do accordingly." Duan Runyao said. In his previous speech, Guo Guangcan, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also had a similar view.

The common voice of the academic and business circles vaguely announces the fact that a new round of quantum revolution is coming.

Take quantum computing as an example. at present, it is generally believed that the development of quantum computer will go through three stages: in the first stage, a special quantum computer with 50-100 qubits is developed to achieve a milestone breakthrough in "quantum superiority"; in the second stage, a quantum simulator capable of manipulating hundreds of qubits is developed to solve some problems that supercomputers are incompetent and of great practical value. In the third stage, the precision of qubit manipulation, the number of integration and fault tolerance are greatly improved, and a programmable general quantum computer is developed.

(Baidu superconducting quantum computer "dry start", which can control 10 qubits) according to Duan Runyao, when the number of qubits that can be controlled by quantum computing exceeds 60-70, certain quantum advantages can be achieved. At present, the mainstream quantum chip in the world has already exceeded 100 bits, and the qubit processor developed by IBM has reached as many as 127qubits. "the industrialization-oriented application of quantum computing is already in a critical position. If we can break through this critical point, we can get hundreds of qubits, which can produce results in some applications of artificial intelligence and combinatorial optimization."

In addition, in the field of quantum communication, at present, China's "Mozi" quantum science satellite has achieved satellite-to-ground two-way distribution of thousands of kilometers, and the world's first quantum secure communication trunk line, the "Beijing-Shanghai trunk line", has also been officially opened. In the field of quantum precision measurement, which is known by the outside world as the most likely to take the lead in practical application, new achievements are constantly coming to the ground.

From a technical point of view, because of the indivisibility, quantum superposition and entanglement of quantum, the encryption algorithm based on quantum technology has absolute confidentiality and is not easy to be eavesdropped. the 100 fault-tolerant qubit computers designed based on qubits can exceed the sum of all the current computing power in terms of computing speed. These advantages have become the focus of competition among countries and major science and technology enterprises all over the world.

Pan Jianwei, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and executive vice president of the University of Science and Technology of China, used the relationship between machine guns and nuclear weapons to compare the relationship between quantum computing and traditional computing. In his view, "if traditional computers are machine guns, then quantum computers are like nuclear weapons." Once the quantum computing technology breaks through, the countries and subjects that master this capability will quickly establish omni-directional advantages in the economic, military, scientific research, security and other fields, while countries and subjects without this technology may experience a nightmare.

According to the incomplete statistics of Sina Science and Technology, so far, 15 major countries and regions in the world, including China, the United States, Japan and Europe, have successively launched quantum science and technology development plans to increase economic investment in the development of quantum science and technology. Among the head technology Internet companies, Google, IBM, Honeywell, Microsoft, Intel and so on all focus on the layout of quantum technology.

Domestically, Ali and Baidu have launched their own quantum computers. In addition, in the past year, nine domestic quantum computing companies have received financing, and five have raised more than 100 million yuan, including quantum spin technology, Turing quantum, Warsaw quantum, non-magnetic technology, and native quantum.

(drawing: Sina Technology) Wen Kai, founder and CEO of Bose Quantum, who received a new round of financing in April this year, told Caizhi, "the capital community's attention to quantum technology companies continues to grow, reflecting the great prospects of the industry." According to him, in July 2021, after the $450 million financing raised by D-round on behalf of PsiQuantum, an optical quantum computing company. At present, other technological routes of quantum computing have also received a lot of investment, and at the same time, there are several listed companies, and everyone is striving towards the goal of industrialization. "in order to get quantum computing out of the ivory tower and laboratory, Bose Quantum has broken through the proof-of-concept stage of optical quantum computing and commercialized the application of optical quantum computing scenarios in biomedical, financial, AI and other industries." Wen Kai said.

According to a set of data provided by Duan Runyao, the industry directly related to global quantum computing will reach 800 billion yuan by 2031. On the other hand, relevant research shows that nearly 70% of major enterprises want to be able to carry out the layout related to quantum computing.

The subversive technological advantages and unprecedented market imagination of quantum technology make more and more countries, enterprises and investors bet on quantum technology one after another. However, for the domestic, before the beautiful vision, the current development of the domestic quantum industry is still facing challenges such as imperfect industrial support, difficult technology landing and so on.

"at present, domestic quantum science and technology-related enterprises are generally in their infancy, and the domestic industrial chain does not have the industrial supporting advantages of chip preparation, hardware manufacturing technology, production lines, talents, and so on, so it is very difficult to achieve sustainable development." Yu Xuan, an investor who has a deep knowledge of quantum computing, revealed to Caiji. According to him, the landing of quantum technology also depends on the semiconductor industry chain such as lithography machines, and in these areas, there are still many choking links in China.

In addition, compared with the imperfect industry, quantum computing is difficult to provide stable computing power in the process of operation; although the number of qubits is enough, the manipulation accuracy of quantum entanglement and the ability of error correction and tolerance are not enough. It also bothers everyone in the industry. According to Yuxuan, "at present, well-known companies on the track have almost not achieved cumulative profits, and only a few have reached more than 10 million yuan in revenue."

What is even more magical is that companies that are seriously engaged in the research and development of quantum technology have not yet made a profit, while some companies that cheat in the name of "quantum technology" continue to emerge.

In July this year, Yiwu police in Jinhua cracked a fraud case under the banner of "quantum cryptography high-tech", with the victims mainly concentrated in the elderly. The 3000 yuan pair of "quantum shoes" launched by the company claims to open channels and collaterals, activate cells, eliminate toxins, and get a rebate on the company's equity. Earlier, "using the principle of quantum entanglement to make crops absorb more fertilizer, and pests could not lay eggs,"the quantum wave-particle duality is yin and yang, which scientifically explains fengshui" and other phenomena of deceiving with "quantum technology" also emerge one after another.

According to Tianyan survey data, at present, there are nearly 4200 enterprises with "quantum" in their business scope in China. In addition to those companies that are really engaged in quantum technology and supporting industrial chains, there are a large number of companies that circle and cheat money in the name of "quantum".

Pan Jianwei, who is known as the "father of quantum" in China, also warned that "some unrealistic and unrealistic propaganda about the application of quantum computing has caused some misleading to the public and investors. In the long run, this will adversely affect the healthy development of the whole field of quantum computing."

Under the internal and external troubles, perhaps in the process of developing quantum technology, we should adopt a pragmatic attitude and strive to create a sustainable development environment for the development of quantum technology.

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