China’s first atomic quantum computer has passed a major commercial milestone, making its first sales to domestic and overseas customers, according to state media.
Hubei Daily, the official newspaper of Hubei province, reported on Friday that the first commercial Hanyuan-1 unit had been delivered to a subsidiary of telecoms provider China Mobile while Pakistan had also placed an order. The sales were valued at more than 40 million yuan (US$5.6 million).
The Hanyuan-1 was one of the few machines in the emerging field of atomic quantum computing to achieve mass production and delivery worldwide, the report said.
Development of the machine – which can be used to do complex calculations such as financial modelling and logistics optimisation – was led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology in the central city of Wuhan.
Using the principles of quantum mechanics, quantum computers can do calculations and solve complex problems much faster than classical computers.
This is achieved by using qubits, which can be both zero and one simultaneously due to a property called superposition.
