Chinese scientists have unveiled the Zuchongzhi-3, a 105-qubit superconducting quantum processor that reportedly operates 10^15 times faster than the world’s most powerful classical supercomputer. This breakthrough, developed by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), represents a dramatic escalation in the global quantum computing competition, with performance claims that go neck-to-neck with Google’s Willow. As the race heats up, the quantum computing singularity seems closer than ever. However, skeptics argue it is still decades away, even as new and increasingly impressive breakthroughs and advancements occur more frequently. Zuchongzhi-3’s architecture represents a significant upgrade from its predecessor, Zuchongzhi-2, featuring 105 qubits arranged in a 15×7 array with 182 couplers to enhance connectivity. The processor achieves impressive operational fidelities, with single-qubit gates at 99.90%, two-qubit gates at 99.62%, and readout fidelity at 99.13%. Most notably, its coherence time of 72 microseconds enables more complex quantum operations before decoherence occurs. This performance improvement allowed researchers to conduct an 83-qubit, 32-cycle random circuit sampling experiment that demonstrated quantum computational advantage over classical computers by 15 orders of magnitude.

Full report : The United States vs China race in Quantum Computing is hotting up with Zuchongzhi-3 chip.