El Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) liderará el desarrollo del
primer ordenador cuántico del sur de Europa y coordinará una red española de
computación cuántica, según un acuerdo adoptado en el Consejo de Ministros de
esta semana y dotado con una inversión inicial de 22 millones de euros
procedentes de fondos europeos.
El ordenador
cuántico se ubicará en la nueva sede del BSC recientemente inaugurada en el
Campus Nord de la Universitat Politècnica (UPC). El objetivo inicial es
construir un prototipo de dos o tres qubits -o bits cuánticos- que podría estar
en funcionamiento a principios de 2023. En los años siguientes, se incrementará
el número de qubits con la perspectiva de construir un ordenador cuántico llamado
de propósito universal, capaz de realizar distintos tipos de tareas.
Quantum Spain
La física Alba Cervera coordinará el proyecto
Este nuevo tipo
de máquina se distingue de los ordenadores cuánticos de propósito único,
capaces de realizar una tarea específica que queda fuera del alcance de los
ordenadores tradicionales, y que son los primeros que se han empezado a
desarrollar.
El proyecto
Quantum Spain ha sido concebido por José Ignacio Latorre, físico de la
Universitat de Barcelona (UB) y del BSC pero será Alba Cervera-Lierta, física
formada en la UB que este año se ha incorporado al BSC tras trabajar como
investigadora postdoctoral en la Universidad de Toronto (Canadá), quien se
encargará de su coordinación.
El uso del nuevo
computador cuántico no estará restringido al ámbito investigador, sino que será
también accesible a las empresas y organismo públicos.
En red
Participarán 25 centros de investigación de
14 comunidades
La creación del
ordenador cuántico se acompaña de una iniciativa para impulsar las capacidades
de computación cuántica en el conjunto de España y en la que participarán 25
centros de investigación de 14 comunidades. Aproximadamente la mitad de estos
centros trabajarán en el desarrollo del software específico para computación
cuántica. La otra mitad son los centros que ya forman parte de la Red Española
de Supercomputación y que desarrollarán la tecnología para que usuarios de toda
España puedan tener acceso en la nube al ordenador cuántico.
En el desarrollo de software se priorizará el desarrollo de algoritmos para
inteligencia artificial en el nuevo campo de investigación de Quantum Machine
Learning. Dada la complejidad de los problemas que aborda la inteligencia
artificial, se considera que la computación cuántica puede abrir la vía a avances
que superan la capacidad de cálculo de los superordenadores actuales.
El conjunto del
proyecto, llamado Quantum Spain, está impulsado por el Ministerio de Asuntos
Económicos y Transformación Digital. Según el acuerdo aprobado el martes por el
Consejo de Ministros, se fortalecerá “el desarrollo tecnológico e industrial en
España y la creación de empleo de alta cualificación”. La secretaria de Estado
de Digitalización e Inteligencia Artificial, Carme Artigas, destaca como la
principal artífice del proyecto dentro del Gobierno.
En la comunidad
científica, el proyecto Quantum Spain ha sido concebido por José Ignacio
Latorre, físico de la Universitat de Barcelona (UB) y del BSC. Estará
coordinado por Alba Cervera-Lierta, física formada en la UB que este año se ha
incorporado al BSC tras trabajar como investigadora postdoctoral en la
Universidad de Toronto (Canadá).
Materials science is an
interdisciplinary field applying the properties of matter to various
areas of science and engineering. This scientific field investigates the
relationship between the structure of materials at atomic or molecular
scales and their macroscopic properties. It incorporates elements of
applied physics and chemistry. With significant media attention focused
on nanoscience and nanotechnology in recent years, materials science has
been propelled to the forefront at many universities. It is also an
important part of forensic engineering and failure analysis. Materials
science also deals with fundamental properties and characteristics of
materials.
The material of choice of a given era is often a defining point. Phrases
such as Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Steel Age are good examples.
Originally deriving from the manufacture of ceramics and its putative
derivative metallurgy, materials science is one of the oldest forms of
engineering and applied science. Modern materials science evolved
directly from metallurgy, which itself evolved from mining and (likely)
ceramics and the use of fire. A major breakthrough in the understanding
of materials occurred in the late 19th
Materiales avanzados
La ciencia de los materiales es un campo interdisciplinar que aplica las propiedades de la materia a diversas áreas de la ciencia y la ingeniería. Este campo científico investiga la relación entre la estructura de los materiales a escala atómica o molecular y sus propiedades macroscópicas. Incorpora elementos de la física y la química aplicadas. En los últimos años, la atención de los medios de comunicación se ha centrado en la nanociencia y la nanotecnología, por lo que la ciencia de los materiales ha pasado a primer plano en muchas universidades. También es una parte importante de la ingeniería forense y el análisis de fallos. La ciencia de los materiales también se ocupa de las propiedades y características fundamentales de los materiales. El material elegido en una época determinada es a menudo un punto definitorio. Frases como Edad de Piedra, Edad de Bronce y Edad de Acero son buenos ejemplos. La ciencia de los materiales, derivada originalmente de la fabricación de cerámica y de su putativo derivado, la metalurgia, es una de las formas más antiguas de la ingeniería y la ciencia aplicada. La ciencia de los materiales moderna evolucionó directamente de la metalurgia, que a su vez evolucionó de la minería y (probablemente) de la cerámica y el uso del fuego. A finales del siglo XIX se produjo un gran avance en el conocimiento de los materiales.
Molecular tweak boosts performance of organic semiconductors for flexible electronic devices
Adding a simple, sulfur-containing chemical group to a semiconducting
molecule can dramatically boost the molecule's performance in a
transistor, RIKEN chemists have found. This suggests that the properties
of carbon-based semiconductors could be tuned by incorporating these
groups.
Development of dendritic-network-implementable artificial neurofiber transistors
by
National Research Council of Science & Technology
Schematic of biological presynaptic and postsynaptic
neurons and a synapse (inset). Credit: Korea Institute of Science and
Technology(KIST)
Advances in artificial-intelligence-based technologies have led
to an astronomical increase in the amounts of data available for
processing by computers. Existing computing methods often process data
sequentially and therefore have large time and power requirements for
processing massive quantities of information. Hence, a transition to a
new computing paradigm is required to solve such challenging issues.
Researchers are currently working towards developing energy-efficient
neuromorphic computing technologies and hardware that are capable of
processing massive amounts of information by mimicking the structure and
mechanisms of the human brain.
The
Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) has reported that a
research team led by Dr. Jung ah Lim and Dr. Hyunsu Ju of the Center for
Opto-electronic Materials and Devices has successfully developed
organic neurofiber transistors with an architecture and functions similar to those of neurons in the human brain, which can be used as a neural network.
Research on devices that can function as neurons and synapses is needed
so that large-scale computations can be performed in a manner similar
to data processing in the human brain. Unlike previously developed
devices that act as either neurons or synapses, the artificial
neurofiber transistors developed at KIST can mimic the behaviors of both
neurons and synapses. By connecting the transistors in arrays, one can
easily create a structure similar to a neural network.
Biological neurons have fibrous branches that can receive multiple
stimuli simultaneously, and signal transmissions are mediated by ion
migrations stimulated by electrical signals. The KIST researchers
developed the aforementioned artificial neurofibers using fibrous
transistors previously developed by them in 2019. They devised memory
transistors that remember the strengths of the applied electrical signals, similar to synapses, and transmit them via redox reactions
between the semiconductor channels and ions within the insulators upon
receiving the electrical stimuli from the neurofiber transistors. These
artificial neurofibers also mimic the signal summation functionality of neurons.
Illustration of the device architecture for
neurofiber-OECT, schematic of the doping mechanism by ions in a
permeable semiconductor (inset) and photograph of OECT-neurofiber.
Credit: Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST)
The researchers created an artificial neural network system
comprising 100 synapses using the artificial neurofibers and verified
the stability of the device
via speech recognition experiments. The proposed neural network was
shown to achieve a recognition accuracy of 88.9% after training with
speech data.
Dr. Jung Ah Lim and Dr. Hyunsu Ju note that "the novel artificial
neurofiber device is an original technology that can be used to create
large-scale, energy-efficient (~2 pJ/signal), and highly reliable
artificial neural networks similar to that of the brain. Our artificial
neurofiber device is flexible and may be used in AI-enabled wearable
electronics made of semiconductor materials or in robotics."
More information:
Soo Jin Kim et al, Dendritic Network Implementable Organic
Neurofiber Transistors with Enhanced Memory Cyclic Endurance for
Spatiotemporal Iterative Learning, Advanced Materials (2021). DOI: 10.1002/adma.202100475
Nuevos dispositivos de memorias para aplicaciones de computación neuromórfica
Para entrenar e implementar redes neuronales artificiales, los ingenieros requieren dispositivos avanzados capaces de realizar cálculos intensivos en datos. En los últimos años, equipos de investigación de todo el mundo han estado tratando de crear tales dispositivos, utilizando diferentes enfoques y diseños.
Una posible manera de crear estos dispositivos es realizar hardware especializado en el que las redes neuronales puedan ser mapeadas directamente. Esto podría implicar, por ejemplo, el uso de matrices de dispositivos memristivos, que simultáneamente realizan cálculos paralelos.
Los investigadores del Instituto Max Planck de Física de Microsestructura y la empresa SEMRON GmbH en Alemania han diseñado recientemente nuevos dispositivos memcapacitivos de eficiencia energética (es decir, condensadores con memoria) que podrían usarse para implementar el aprendizaje automático lgoritmos. Estos dispositivos, presentados en un artículo publicado en Nature Electronics, funcionan explotando un principio conocido como blindaje de carga.
"Nos dimos cuenta de que además de los enfoques digitales convencionales para ejecutar redes neuronales, había en su mayoría enfoques memristivos y sólo muy pocas propuestas memcapacitivas", dijo Kai-Uwe Demasius, uno de los investigadores que llevó a cabo el estudio, a TechXpl mineral. "Además, nos dimos cuenta de que todos los chips de IA disponibles comercialmente solo son digitales/mixtas basados en señal y hay pocos chips con dispositivos de memoria resistiva. Por lo tanto, empezamos a investigar un enfoque alternativo basado en un dispositivo de memoria capacitiva. "
Mientras revisaban estudios previos, Demasius y sus colegas observaron que todos los dispositivos memcapacitivos existentes eran difíciles de escalar y presentaban un rango dinámico pobre. Así se propusieron desarrollar dispositivos más eficientes y fáciles de escalar. El nuevo dispositivo memcapacitivo que crearon se inspira en sinapsis y neurotransmisores en el cerebro.
"Los dispositivos memcapacitadores son inherentemente muchas veces más eficientes energéticamente en comparación con los dispositivos memristivos, porque se basan en campo eléctrico en lugar de corriente y la relación señal-ruido es mejor para el primer caso", dijo Demasius. "Nuestro dispositivo memcapacitor se basa en el cribado de carga, lo que permite una escalabilidad mucho mejor y un mayor rango dinámico en comparación con ensayos previos para realizar dispositivos memcapacitivos. "
El dispositivo creado por Demasius y sus colegas controla el acoplamiento del campo eléctrico entre un electrodo de puerta superior y un electrodo inferior de lectura a través de otra capa, llamada capa de escudo. Esta capa blindaje es a su vez ajustada por una memoria analógica, que puede almacenar los diferentes valores de peso de las redes neuronales artificiales, de manera similar a cómo los neurotransmisores en el cerebro almacenan y transmiten información.
New memcapacitor devices for neuromorphic computing applications
by Ingrid Fadelli
, Tech
Xplore
To train and implement artificial neural networks, engineers require
advanced devices capable of performing data-intensive computations. In
recent years, research teams worldwide have been trying to create such
devices, using different approaches and designs.
One possible way to create these devices is to realize specialized hardware onto which neural networks
can be mapped directly. This could entail, for instance, the use of
arrays of memristive devices, which simultaneously perform parallel
computations.
Researchers at Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics and the
startup SEMRON GmbH in Germany have recently designed new
energy-efficient memcapacitive devices (i.e., capacitors with a memory)
that could be used to implement machine-learning algorithms. These
devices, presented in a paper published in Nature Electronics, work by exploiting a principle known as charge shielding.
"We noticed that besides conventional digital approaches for running
neural networks, there were mostly memristive approaches and only very
few memcapacitive proposals," Kai-Uwe Demasius, one of the researchers
who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "In addition, we noticed
that all commercially available AI Chips are only digital/mixed signal
based and there are few chips with resistive memory devices. Therefore,
we started to investigate an alternative approach based on a capacitive
memory device."
While reviewing previous studies, Demasius and his colleagues
observed that all existing memcapacitive devices were difficult to scale
up and exhibited a poor dynamic range. They thus set out to develop
devices that are more efficient and easier to scale up. The new
memcapacitive device they created draws inspiration from synapses and
neurotransmitters in the brain.
"Memcapacitor devices are inherently many times more energy efficient
compared to memristive devices, because they are electric field based
instead of current based and the signal-to-noise ratio is better for the
first case," Demasius said. "Our memcapacitor device is based on charge
screening, which enables much better scalability and higher dynamic
range in comparison to prior trials to realize memcapacitive devices."
The device created by Demasius and his colleagues controls the electric field
coupling between a top gate electrode and a bottom read-out electrode
via another layer, called the shielding layer. This shielding layer is
in turn adjusted by an analog memory, which can store the different
weight values of artificial neural networks, similarly to how
neurotransmitters in the brain store and convey information.
To evaluate their devices, the researchers arranged 156 of them in a
crossbar pattern, then used them to train a neural network to
distinguish between three different letters of the roman alphabet ("M,"
"P' and "I'). Remarkably, their devices attained energy efficiencies of
over 3,500 TOPS/W at 8 Bit precision, which is 35 to 300 times larger
compared to other existing memresistive approaches. These findings
highlight the potential of the team's new memcapacitors for running
large and complex deep learning models with a very low power consumption
(in the μW regime).
"We believe that the next generation human-machine interfaces will heavily depend on automatic speech recognition
(ASR)," Demasius said. "This not only includes wake-up-word detection,
but also more complex algorithms, like speech-to-text conversion.
Currently ASR is mostly done in the cloud, but processing on the edge
has advantages with regards to data protection amongst other."
If speech recognition techniques improve further, speech could
eventually become the primary means through which users communicate with
computers and other electronic devices. However, such an improvement
will be difficult or impossible to implement without large neural
network-based models with billions of parameters. New devices that can
efficiently implement these models, such as the one developed by
Demasius and his colleagues, could thus play a crucial role in realizing
the full potential of artificial intelligence (AI).
"We founded a start-up that facilitates this superior technology," Demasius said. "SEMRON´s vision is to enable these large artificial neural networks
on a very small formfactor and power these algorithms with battery
power or even energy harvesting, for instance on ear buds or any other
wearable."
SEMRON, the start-up founded by Demasius and his colleagues, has
already applied for several patents related to deep learning models for
speech recognition. In the future, the team plans to develop more neural
network-based models, while also trying to scale up the
memcapacitor-based system they designed, by increasing both its
efficiency and device-density.
"We are constantly filing patents for any topic related to this,"
Demasius said. "Our ultimate goal is to enable every device to carry
heavily AI functionality on device and we also envision a lot of
approaches when it comes to training or deep learning model
architectures. Spiking neural nets and transformer based neural networks
are only some examples. One strength is that we can support all these
approaches, but of course constant research is necessary to keep up with
all new concepts in that domain."
More information:
Kai-Uwe Demasius, Aron Kirschen, and Stuart Parkin,
Energy-efficient memcapacitor devices for neuromorphic computing, Nature Electronics(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41928-021-00649-y
MATHEMATICS FOR MACHINE LEARNING (AND DEEP LEARNING)
A highly recommended course by Jon Krohn
The full curriculum and free sample videos are available here: jonkrohn.com/udemy
All of the lessons from the course are (or will shortly be, in the case of the final Calculus videos) also available for free on YouTube, split across two playlists:
And if you have access to the O'Reilly Media learning platform, you can enjoy the studio-recorded, professionally-produced versions of all this content there: https://lnkd.in/dU-bB6QS
Avances en tecnologia: Fusion / Ordenadores cuanticos/ Transmisión inalambrica de energia
MIT-designed project achieves major advance toward fusion energy
New superconducting magnet breaks magnetic field strength records, paving the way for practical, commercial, carbon-free power.
It was a moment three years in the making, based on
intensive research and design work: On Sept. 5, for the first time, a
large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet was ramped up to a
field strength of 20 tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind
ever created on Earth. That successful demonstration helps resolve the
greatest uncertainty in the quest to build the world’s first fusion
power plant that can produce more power than it consumes, according to
the project’s leaders at MIT and startup company Commonwealth Fusion
Systems (CFS).
That advance paves the way, they say, for the long-sought creation of
practical, inexpensive, carbon-free power plants that could make a
major contribution to limiting the effects of global climate change.
“Fusion in a lot of ways is the ultimate clean energy source,” says
Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research and E. A. Griswold
Professor of Geophysics. “The amount of power that is available is
really game-changing.” The fuel used to create fusion energy comes from
water, and “the Earth is full of water — it’s a nearly unlimited
resource. We just have to figure out how to utilize it.”
Developing the new magnet is seen as the greatest technological
hurdle to making that happen; its successful operation now opens the
door to demonstrating fusion in a lab on Earth, which has been pursued
for decades with limited progress. With the magnet technology now
successfully demonstrated, the MIT-CFS collaboration is on track to
build the world’s first fusion device that can create and confine a
plasma that produces more energy than it consumes. That demonstration
device, called SPARC, is targeted for completion in 2025.
“The challenges of making fusion happen are both technical and
scientific,” says Dennis Whyte, director of MIT’s Plasma Science and
Fusion Center, which is working with CFS to develop SPARC. But once the
technology is proven, he says, “it’s an inexhaustible, carbon-free
source of energy that you can deploy anywhere and at any time. It’s
really a fundamentally new energy source.”
Whyte, who is the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering, says this
week’s demonstration represents a major milestone, addressing the
biggest questions remaining about the feasibility of the SPARC design.
“It’s really a watershed moment, I believe, in fusion science and
technology,” he says.
The sun in a bottle
Fusion is the process that powers the sun: the merger of two small
atoms to make a larger one, releasing prodigious amounts of energy. But
the process requires temperatures far beyond what any solid material
could withstand. To capture the sun’s power source here on Earth, what’s
needed is a way of capturing and containing something that hot —
100,000,000 degrees or more — by suspending it in a way that prevents it
from coming into contact with anything solid.
That’s done through intense magnetic fields, which form a kind of
invisible bottle to contain the hot swirling soup of protons and
electrons, called a plasma. Because the particles have an electric
charge, they are strongly controlled by the magnetic fields, and the
most widely used configuration for containing them is a donut-shaped
device called a tokamak. Most of these devices have produced their
magnetic fields using conventional electromagnets made of copper, but
the latest and largest version under construction in France, called
ITER, uses what are known as low-temperature superconductors.
The major innovation in the MIT-CFS fusion design is the use of
high-temperature superconductors, which enable a much stronger magnetic
field in a smaller space. This design was made possible by a new kind of
superconducting material that became commercially available a few years
ago. The idea initially arose as a class project in a nuclear
engineering class taught by Whyte. The idea seemed so promising that it
continued to be developed over the next few iterations of that class,
leading to the ARC power plant design concept in early 2015. SPARC,
designed to be about half the size of ARC, is a testbed to prove the
concept before construction of the full-size, power-producing plant.
Until now, the only way to achieve the colossally powerful magnetic
fields needed to create a magnetic “bottle” capable of containing plasma
heated up to hundreds of millions of degrees was to make them larger
and larger. But the new high-temperature superconductor material, made
in the form of a flat, ribbon-like tape, makes it possible to achieve a
higher magnetic field in a smaller device, equaling the performance that
would be achieved in an apparatus 40 times larger in volume using
conventional low-temperature superconducting magnets. That leap in power
versus size is the key element in ARC’s revolutionary design.
The use of the new high-temperature superconducting magnets makes it
possible to apply decades of experimental knowledge gained from the
operation of tokamak experiments, including MIT’s own Alcator series.
The new approach, led by Zach Hartwig, the MIT principal investigator
and the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Assistant Professor of
Nuclear Science and Engineering, uses a well-known design but scales
everything down to about half the linear size and still achieves the
same operational conditions because of the higher magnetic field.
A series of scientific papers published last year outlined the physical basis and, by simulation, confirmed the viability
of the new fusion device. The papers showed that, if the magnets worked
as expected, the whole fusion system should indeed produce net power
output, for the first time in decades of fusion research.
Martin Greenwald, deputy director and senior research scientist at
the PSFC, says unlike some other designs for fusion experiments, “the
niche that we were filling was to use conventional plasma physics, and
conventional tokamak designs and engineering, but bring to it this new
magnet technology. So, we weren’t requiring innovation in a half-dozen
different areas. We would just innovate on the magnet, and then apply
the knowledge base of what’s been learned over the last decades.”
That combination of scientifically established design principles and
game-changing magnetic field strength is what makes it possible to
achieve a plant that could be economically viable and developed on a
fast track. “It’s a big moment,” says Bob Mumgaard, CEO of CFS. “We now
have a platform that is both scientifically very well-advanced, because
of the decades of research on these machines, and also commercially very
interesting. What it does is allow us to build devices faster, smaller,
and at less cost,” he says of the successful magnet demonstration.
Bringing that new magnet concept to reality required three years of
intensive work on design, establishing supply chains, and working out
manufacturing methods for magnets that may eventually need to be
produced by the thousands.
“We built a first-of-a-kind, superconducting magnet. It required a
lot of work to create unique manufacturing processes and equipment. As a
result, we are now well-prepared to ramp-up for SPARC production,” says
Joy Dunn, head of operations at CFS. “We started with a physics model
and a CAD design, and worked through lots of development and prototypes
to turn a design on paper into this actual physical magnet.” That
entailed building manufacturing capabilities and testing facilities,
including an iterative process with multiple suppliers of the
superconducting tape, to help them reach the ability to produce material
that met the needed specifications — and for which CFS is now
overwhelmingly the world’s biggest user.
They worked with two possible magnet designs in parallel, both of
which ended up meeting the design requirements, she says. “It really
came down to which one would revolutionize the way that we make
superconducting magnets, and which one was easier to build.” The design
they adopted clearly stood out in that regard, she says.
In this test, the new magnet was gradually powered up in a series of
steps until reaching the goal of a 20 tesla magnetic field — the highest
field strength ever for a high-temperature superconducting fusion
magnet. The magnet is composed of 16 plates stacked together, each one
of which by itself would be the most powerful high-temperature
superconducting magnet in the world.
“Three years ago we announced a plan,” says Mumgaard, “to build a
20-tesla magnet, which is what we will need for future fusion machines.”
That goal has now been achieved, right on schedule, even with the
pandemic, he says.
Citing the series of physics papers published last year, Brandon
Sorbom, the chief science officer at CFS, says “basically the papers
conclude that if we build the magnet, all of the physics will work in
SPARC. So, this demonstration answers the question: Can they build the
magnet? It’s a very exciting time! It’s a huge milestone.”
The next step will be building SPARC, a smaller-scale version of the
planned ARC power plant. The successful operation of SPARC will
demonstrate that a full-scale commercial fusion power plant is
practical, clearing the way for rapid design and construction of that
pioneering device can then proceed full speed.
Zuber says that “I now am genuinely optimistic that SPARC can achieve
net positive energy, based on the demonstrated performance of the
magnets. The next step is to scale up, to build an actual power plant.
There are still many challenges ahead, not the least of which is
developing a design that allows for reliable, sustained operation. And
realizing that the goal here is commercialization, another major
challenge will be economic. How do you design these power plants so it
will be cost effective to build and deploy them?”
Someday in a hoped-for future, when there may be thousands of fusion
plants powering clean electric grids around the world, Zuber says, “I
think we’re going to look back and think about how we got there, and I
think the demonstration of the magnet technology, for me, is the time
when I believed that, wow, we can really do this.”
The successful creation of a power-producing fusion device would be a
tremendous scientific achievement, Zuber notes. But that’s not the main
point. “None of us are trying to win trophies at this point. We’re
trying to keep the planet livable.”
El equipo en cuestión
no buscó reinventar todo y construir la fusión desde cero. Ella se
concentró en un problema: los imanes. Actualmente, para hacer un tokamak
como ITER, hacemos imanes más grandes, superconductores, enfriados
constantemente a temperaturas extremadamente bajas. Este equipo trabajó
en imanes extremadamente potentes y a temperatura ambiente, y sobretotu
con un consumo moderado. Resultado, imanes pequeños, que tienen tanto
poder como imanes descomunales. Por lo tanto, se pueden hacer reacciones
de fusión que generen más energía de la que consumen.
Sin
embargo, no todo lo que se ha hecho en proyectos como el ITER se
pierde, ya que los resultados obtenidos en muchas otras áreas serán
reinvertidos.
Así que
los equipos planean hacer un demostrador de tamaño 1/2 de una central de
fusión que pueda funcionar para 2025. Ya no se habla de proyecto "para
dentro de 30 o 40 años" sino de mañana a escala industrial.
Y
el papel del año pasado que daba los 7 artículos científicos que
validaban el proyecto de fusión ARC/SPARC, con la condición de tener
estos famosos imanes
Validating the physics behind the new MIT-designed fusion experiment
Seven studies describe progress thus far and challenges ahead for a revolutionary zero-emissions power source.
Two and a half years ago, MIT entered into a research
agreement with startup company Commonwealth Fusion Systems to develop a
next-generation fusion research experiment, called SPARC, as a precursor
to a practical, emissions-free power plant.
Now, after many months of intensive research and engineering work,
the researchers charged with defining and refining the physics behind
the ambitious tokamak design have published a series of papers
summarizing the progress they have made and outlining the key research
questions SPARC will enable.
Overall, says Martin Greenwald, deputy director of MIT’s Plasma
Science and Fusion Center and one of the project’s lead scientists, the
work is progressing smoothly and on track. This series of papers
provides a high level of confidence in the plasma physics and the
performance predictions for SPARC, he says. No unexpected impediments or
surprises have shown up, and the remaining challenges appear to be
manageable. This sets a solid basis for the device’s operation once
constructed, according to Greenwald.
Greenwald wrote the introduction for a set of seven research papers
authored by 47 researchers from 12 institutions and published today in a
special issue of the Journal of Plasma Physics. Together, the
papers outline the theoretical and empirical physics basis for the new
fusion system, which the consortium expects to start building next year.
SPARC is planned to be the first experimental device ever to achieve a
“burning plasma” — that is, a self-sustaining fusion reaction in which
different isotopes of the element hydrogen fuse together to form helium,
without the need for any further input of energy. Studying the behavior
of this burning plasma — something never before seen on Earth in a
controlled fashion — is seen as crucial information for developing the
next step, a working prototype of a practical, power-generating power
plant.
Such fusion power plants might significantly reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from the power-generation sector, one of the major sources of
these emissions globally. The MIT and CFS project is one of the largest
privately funded research and development projects ever undertaken in
the fusion field.
"The MIT group is pursuing a very compelling approach to fusion
energy." says Chris Hegna, a professor of engineering physics at the
University of Wisconsin at Madison, who was not connected to this work.
"They realized the emergence of high-temperature superconducting
technology enables a high magnetic field approach to producing net
energy gain from a magnetic confinement system. This work is a potential
game-changer for the international fusion program."
The SPARC design, though about twice the size as MIT’s now-retired Alcator C-Mod
experiment and similar to several other research fusion machines
currently in operation, would be far more powerful, achieving fusion
performance comparable to that expected in the much larger ITER tokamak
being built in France by an international consortium. The high power in a
small size is made possible by advances in superconducting magnets that
allow for a much stronger magnetic field to confine the hot plasma.
The SPARC project was launched in early 2018, and work on its first
stage, the development of the superconducting magnets that would allow
smaller fusion systems to be built, has been proceeding apace. The new
set of papers represents the first time that the underlying physics
basis for the SPARC machine has been outlined in detail in peer-reviewed
publications. The seven papers explore the specific areas of the
physics that had to be further refined, and that still require ongoing
research to pin down the final elements of the machine design and the
operating procedures and tests that will be involved as work progresses
toward the power plant.
The papers also describe the use of calculations and simulation tools
for the design of SPARC, which have been tested against many
experiments around the world. The authors used cutting-edge simulations,
run on powerful supercomputers, that have been developed to aid the
design of ITER. The large multi-institutional team of researchers
represented in the new set of papers aimed to bring the best consensus
tools to the SPARC machine design to increase confidence it will achieve
its mission.
The analysis done so far shows that the planned fusion energy output
of the SPARC tokamak should be able to meet the design specifications
with a comfortable margin to spare. It is designed to achieve a Q factor
— a key parameter denoting the efficiency of a fusion plasma — of at
least 2, essentially meaning that twice as much fusion energy is
produced as the amount of energy pumped in to generate the reaction.
That would be the first time a fusion plasma of any kind has produced
more energy than it consumed.
The calculations at this point show that SPARC could actually achieve
a Q ratio of 10 or more, according to the new papers. While Greenwald
cautions that the team wants to be careful not to overpromise, and much
work remains, the results so far indicate that the project will at least
achieve its goals, and specifically will meet its key objective of
producing a burning plasma, wherein the self-heating dominates the
energy balance.
Limitations imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic slowed progress a bit,
but not much, he says, and the researchers are back in the labs under
new operating guidelines.
Overall, “we’re still aiming for a start of construction in roughly
June of ’21,” Greenwald says. “The physics effort is well-integrated
with the engineering design. What we’re trying to do is put the project
on the firmest possible physics basis, so that we’re confident about how
it’s going to perform, and then to provide guidance and answer
questions for the engineering design as it proceeds.”
Many of the fine details are still being worked out on the machine
design, covering the best ways of getting energy and fuel into the
device, getting the power out, dealing with any sudden thermal or power
transients, and how and where to measure key parameters in order to
monitor the machine’s operation.
So far, there have been only minor changes to the overall design. The
diameter of the tokamak has been increased by about 12 percent, but
little else has changed, Greenwald says. “There’s always the question of
a little more of this, a little less of that, and there’s lots of
things that weigh into that, engineering issues, mechanical stresses,
thermal stresses, and there’s also the physics — how do you affect the
performance of the machine?”
The publication of this special issue of the journal, he says,
“represents a summary, a snapshot of the physics basis as it stands
today.” Though members of the team have discussed many aspects of it at
physics meetings, “this is our first opportunity to tell our story, get
it reviewed, get the stamp of approval, and put it out into the
community.”
Greenwald says there is still much to be learned about the physics of
burning plasmas, and once this machine is up and running, key
information can be gained that will help pave the way to commercial,
power-producing fusion devices, whose fuel — the hydrogen isotopes
deuterium and tritium — can be made available in virtually limitless
supplies.
The details of the burning plasma “are really novel and important,”
he says. “The big mountain we have to get over is to understand this
self-heated state of a plasma.”
"The analysis presented in these papers will provide the world-wide
fusion community with an opportunity to better understand the physics
basis of the SPARC device and gauge for itself the remaining challenges
that need to be resolved," says George Tynan, professor of mechanical
and aerospace engineering at the University of California at San Diego,
who was not connected to this work. "Their publication marks an
important milestone on the road to the study of burning plasmas and the
first demonstration of net energy production from controlled fusion, and
I applaud the authors for putting this work out for all to see."
Overall, Greenwald says, the work that has gone into the analysis
presented in this package of papers “helps to validate our confidence
that we will achieve the mission. We haven’t run into anything where we
say, ‘oh, this is predicting that we won’t get to where we want.” In
short, he says, “one of the conclusions is that things are still looking
on-track. We believe it’s going to work.”
No solo cuántica, posiblemente tradicional también. Y con silicios propios
China's New Quantum Computer Has 1 Million Times the Power of Google's
And they say it's the world's fastest.
t appears a quantum computer rivalry is growing between the U.S. and China.
Physicists
in China claim they've constructed two quantum computers with
performance speeds that outrival competitors in the U.S., debuting a
superconducting machine, in addition to an even speedier one that uses
light photons to obtain unprecedented results, according to a recent
study published in the peer-reviewed journals Physical Review Letters and Science Bulletin.
China
has exaggerated the capabilities of its technology before, but such
soft spins are usually tagged to defense tech, which means this new feat
could be the real deal.
China's quantum computers still make a lot of errors
The
supercomputer, called Jiuzhang 2, can calculate in a single millisecond
a task that the fastest conventional computer in the world would take a
mind-numbing 30 trillion years to do. The breakthrough was revealed
during an interview with the research team, which was broadcast on
China's state-owned CCTV on Tuesday, which could make the news suspect.
But with two peer-reviewed papers, it's important to take this
seriously. Pan Jianwei, lead researcher of the studies, said that
Zuchongzhi 2, which is a 66-qubit programmable superconducting quantum
computer is an incredible 10 million times faster than Google's 55-qubit Sycamore, making China's new machine the fastest in the world, and the first to beat Google's in two years.
El láser que nos acerca a un nuevo tipo de fusión nuclear
Investigadores de la fuerza
naval de Estados Unidos están desarrollando un láser de fluoruro de
argón que podría dar pie a plantas de energía de fusión más pequeñas y
más baratas
El Laboratorio de Investigación Naval de Estados Unidos (NRL) está desarrollando un láser de fluoruro de argón que, según sus creadores, puede alcanzar la energía y la potencia necesarias para llevar a cabo la fusión nuclear. Este nuevo método promete también reducir el tamaño y el coste de este tipo de centrales haciéndolas todavía más viables.
Uno de los mayores retos que tiene por delante la fusión nuclear para poder cumplir con el sueño de la energía barata e infinita está en conseguir que el proceso no necesite más energía de la que genera. En eso están los investigadores del ITER, un gigantesco reactor que se está construyendo en el sur de Francia, los de la canadiense General Fusión,
que cuentan con el soporte financiero de Jeff Bezos o los de la coreana
KSTAR que ya ha conseguido mantener la fusión nuclear a 100 millones de grados centígrados durante 20 segundos.
Todos estos reactores utilizan diversos sistemas de imanes
para conseguir la unión de los núcleos de los átomos de hidrógeno. Pero
el método creado por los investigadores de la fuerza naval
norteamericana se basa en otro principio, el de confinamiento inercial.
Este sistema utiliza rayos láser para conseguir alcanzar las altas
densidades y los 100 millones de grados centígrados necesarios para iniciar las reacciones de fusión.
El tamaño de este sistema es mucho menor que el de otros reactores nucleares. (US NAVY)
"El láser de fluoruro de argón podría permitir el desarrollo y la
construcción de centrales de fusión mucho más pequeñas y de menor
coste", dijo Steve Obenschain, investigador del NRL y uno de los autores del estudio
publicado en la revista 'The Royal Society' donde se detalla su
descubrimiento. "Esto aceleraría el despliegue de esta atractiva fuente
de energía con suficientes reservas de combustible disponibles como para
durar miles de años".
Cómo funciona
El método de confinamiento inercial consiste en aplicar varios rayos
láser a una pequeña pelota de combustible nuclear compuesto por deuterio
o tritio, que son isótopos del hidrógeno. Con el impacto de los
láseres, la pelota de combustible, que puede tener el tamaño aproximado
de un garbanzo pedrosillano, se calienta y se comprime en una fracción
de segundo hasta tal punto que los átomos de hidrógeno implosionan, se fusionan y liberan enormes cantidades de energía.
Este verano un sistema similar, creado por el National Ignition Facility (NIF) de EEUU, consiguió crear casi tanta energía con la fusión como la empleada por su dispositivo de 192 rayos láser. El NIF fue capaz de producir 1,3 megajulios de energía de fusión demostrando la viabilidad de este sistema.
Uno de los investigadores del NRL inspecciona el láser ArF. (NRL)
Según las simulaciones realizadas por el NRL, la luz ultravioleta
profunda del ArF permite generar ganancia energética empleando una energía de láser mucho más baja de lo que se creía posible hasta ahora. Los
científicos afirman que el rendimiento podría multiplicarse por cien y
conseguir una eficiencia del 16%, cuatro puntos por encima del siguiente
láser más eficiente, el de fluoruro de criptón.
"El resultado del NIF es impresionante y pone de manifiesto la
necesidad de mirar hacia adelante para ver qué tecnologías láser
acelerarán el progreso futuro. La tecnología del láser ArF del NRL
ofrece un camino hacia una ganancia y un rendimiento de la fusión mucho más elevados", afirma Obenschain.
Qué hace falta para que esté operativo
Obenschain reconoce que este sistema de láseres ArF todavía requiere trabajo y
una importante inversión para alcanzar el rendimiento necesario para
hacerlo viable a nivel comercial. Para el investigador, todavía falta
mejorar la precisión, la tasa de repetición y la fiabilidad de los mil
millones de disparos necesarios para poner en marcha una central
eléctrica que se pueda conectar a la red eléctrica. Los investigadores
aseguran que los planes para los próximos experimentos ya están en marcha y se espera que tengan lugar en los próximos meses.
La transmisión inalámbrica de energía es posible: hace funcionar una estación 5G con láseres
La energía inalámbrica tiene el
potencial de ser muy útil, pero el alcance es un gran obstáculo. En un
nuevo proyecto de prueba de concepto, Ericsson y PowerLight Technologies
han demostrado una técnica llamada optical beaming, que utiliza un
láser para transmitir energía a una estación base 5G portátil.
La experiencia de la mayoría de la gente
con la energía inalámbrica es para cargar dispositivos como teléfonos,
relojes o auriculares, pero eso sigue requiriendo que se coloquen en una
almohadilla, lo que limita su utilidad. Los laboratorios están
experimentando con sistemas más grandes que pueden cargar dispositivos en cualquier lugar de una habitación, pero ¿qué pasa con la transmisión de electricidad a largas distancias en el exterior?
PowerLight lleva años desarrollando la tecnología necesaria para ello, y ahora la ha demostrado con una prueba de concepto en colaboración con la empresa de telecomunicaciones Ericsson.
El sistema consta de dos componentes principales, un transmisor y un
receptor, que pueden estar separados por cientos o miles de metros.
El sistema no envía electricidad directamente, como una bobina de Tesla,
sino que la electricidad en el extremo del transmisor se utiliza para
producir un potente haz de luz y enviarlo hacia el receptor, que lo
capta mediante una matriz fotovoltaica especializada. Éste, a su vez,
convierte los fotones entrantes en electricidad, para alimentar
cualquier dispositivo al que esté conectado.
Figura 1. Un diagrama que ilustra la tecnología de transmisión inalámbrica de energía.
Aunque pueda parecer peligroso tener un haz de luz de alta intensidad al aire libre, existen medidas de seguridad.
El propio haz está rodeado por un "cilindro" más amplio de sensores que
detectan cuando se acerca algo y apagan el haz en un milisegundo. Es
tan rápido que interrupciones fugaces como las de los pájaros no
afectarían al servicio, pero hay una batería de reserva en el extremo
del receptor para cubrir cualquier posible interrupción a largo plazo.
En este caso, el sistema PowerLight
alimentaba una de las estaciones radiobase 5G de Ericsson, que no estaba
conectada a ninguna otra fuente de energía. El sistema suministró 480 vatios a una distancia de 300 m, pero el equipo afirma que la tecnología ya debería ser capaz de enviar 1.000 vatios a más de 1 km, con margen de ampliación en futuras pruebas.
Alimentar estas unidades 5G de forma inalámbrica podría hacerlas más portátiles,
lo que permitiría desplegarlas en lugares temporales de mayor demanda,
como festivales y eventos, o durante catástrofes en las que se hayan
interrumpido otras infraestructuras.
La tecnología de transmisión óptica de PowerLight podría utilizarse también en muchas otras aplicaciones, como la recarga de vehículos eléctricos, el ajuste de la red eléctrica sobre la marcha e incluso en futuras misiones espaciales.
Pero no es la única empresa que trabaja con objetivos similares.
El año pasado, la empresa neozelandesa Emrod presentó su propia visión
para la transmisión de energía a larga distancia, pero en lugar de luz y
células fotovoltaicas, transmite energía por microondas entre antenas.
Los prototipos de Emrod han transmitido
hasta ahora unos 2 kilovatios de energía a más de 40 m, y la empresa
afirma que debería ser capaz de ampliar la escala para enviar mucha más
energía a decenas de kilómetros.
Entre todos, la transmisión
inalámbrica de energía podría convertirse en una parte fundamental de
las redes eléctricas en las próximas décadas.
China ostenta ya el liderazgo indiscutible en la supremacía cuántica
con dos ordenadores, uno que usa la luz y otro circuitos
superconductores, que realizan proezas de cálculo inalcanzables para la
computación tradicional.
China ha desarrollado dos ordenadores cuánticos diferentes, uno que
usa la luz y otro circuitos superconductores, y obtenido una potencia de
cálculo inalcanzable para la computación tradicional, según se explica
en dos artículos publicados en Physical Review Letters.
Eso significa que este doble sistema de computación cuántica otorga a
China la capacidad de resolver problemas prácticos que no se pueden
implementar en ordenadores convencionales, destaca al respecto PhysicsWorld.
Con este resultado, China ya es mucho más que una potencia económica:
junto a sus desarrollos energéticos con el sol artificial, también ha
entrado con fuerza en la «carrera espacial» del siglo XXI, con
diferentes proyectos orientados a Marte y la Luna.
Los nuevos ordenadores cuánticos han sido desarrollados por dos
grupos del Laboratorio Nacional de Ciencias Físicas de Hefei, de la
Universidad de Ciencia y Tecnología de China, dirigidos por el profesor Jian-Wei Pan,
cuya labor ha sido destacada en el pasado, tanto por la revista Nature
como por Science, como pionero en la ciencia de la información cuántica
experimental.
El pasado julio, China anunció
que había alcanzado la supremacía cuántica con un superordenador
llamado Zuchongzhi, capaz de realizar operaciones mucho más rápido que
la computadora cuántica de Google.
Zuchongzhi completó un cálculo complejo en algo más de una hora,
haciéndolo unas 60.000 veces más deprisa que un ordenador clásico:
utilizando 56 cúbits, resolvió en solo 1,2 horas una tarea que a un
superordenador clásico le llevaría ocho años.
Dos nuevos ordenadores cuánticos
China emerge ahora con un nuevo ordenador cuántico, al que denomina Zuchongzhi 2.1,
que usa 66 cúbits y es 10 millones de veces más rápido que el
superordenador más rápido actual: su complejidad de cálculo es más de 1
millón de veces mayor que el procesador Sycamore de Google.
También emerge con otro superordenador cuántico, al que denomina Jiuzhang 2.0, que usa la luz para procesar información, en vez de los circuitos superconductores que sustentan a Zuchongzhi 2.1.
«Jiuzhang 2.0», con 113 fotones que transmiten cúbits, es un
septillón de veces más potente: puede resolver en un milisegundo una
operación que el ordenador más rápido del mundo tardaría 30 billones de
años.
Este segundo desarrollo representa también toda una proeza ante la
versión anterior de este mismo sistema de computación cuántica basada en
la luz, el «Jiuzhang», presentado a finales de 2020 y con el cual se
utilizaron 76 fotones transmisores de cúbits.
Supremacía cuántica
Con estos desarrollos, China consolida su ventaja cuántica global y
confirma que los ordenadores cuánticos son mucho más potentes y eficaces
que los ordenadores clásicos para resolver problemas críticos.
Los ordenadores clásicos se basan en el sistema binario, en el que
cada símbolo constituye un bit, la unidad mínima de información de este
sistema, que solo puede tener dos valores (cero o uno).
Estos ordenadores clásicos han conseguido aumentar su potencia a
través de los superordenadores, que aparecieron en los años 70 del siglo
pasado.
Estos superordenadores, más conocidos como ordenadores de alto rendimiento,
basan sus extraordinarias capacidades (medidas en petaflops) en la suma
de poderosos ordenadores binarios unidos entre sí para aumentar su
potencia de trabajo y rendimiento.
Otro universo
La informática cuántica pertenece a otro universo: usa una unidad
básica de información completamente diferente y superior llamaba cúbit.
El cúbit, a diferencia del bit, puede tomar varios valores a la vez,
es decir, manifiesta un sistema cuántico con dos estados propios
simultáneos.
Mientras que el bit adopta valores de 0 o 1 en grupos de 8,16,32 o 64
bits, la medida en cúbits puede estar en ambos estados de 0 y 1 de
forma simultánea, lo que le otorga la capacidad de realizar operaciones
inalcanzables para la computación binaria.
La supremacía cuántica se alcanza cuando se demuestra que un
ordenador basado en cúbits puede resolver algo que no está al alcance de
ordenadores binarios, aunque sean muy sofisticados.
Supremacía doble
Aunque se ha afirmado en el pasado que la supremacía cuántica ya se
ha alcanzado, y se convirtió en un campo de batalla entre IBM y Google,
China ha adelantado a ambos con desarrollos mucho más potentes que, según la revista Physics, le otorgan sin lugar a duda la supremacía cuántica real y verificada.
Y no solo eso, sino que lo ha conseguido siguiendo dos caminos
diferentes y paralelos que fortifican su supremacía: el de la luz y el
de los circuitos superconductores.
Physics destaca que es muy difícil que algoritmos y ordenadores
clásicos puedan mejorar las ventajas cuánticas de China, por lo que
podemos decir que el debate sobre si realmente existe la supremacía
cuántica ha concluido.
¿Supremacía útil?
Y concluye la revista: dado que las máquinas cuánticas resuelven
problemas tan grandes e impresionantes de una manera que supera con
creces a los simuladores clásicos, ¿podríamos usar estos ordenadores
cuánticos para resolver problemas computacionales útiles?
Los investigadores han afirmado que estos ordenadores cuánticos
pueden abordar problemas importantes, en particular en el campo de la
química cuántica, pero aún no se ha informado de ninguna demostración
experimental convincente, finaliza Physics.
Multiple supercomputing institutions in China have built machines
that have already breached the landmark exascale barrier in
behind-closed-doors testing, reports suggest.
According to Next Platform,
which says it has the information on “outstanding authority”, a machine
at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi (called Sunway Oceanlite)
recorded a peak score of 1.3 exaFLOPS by the LINPACK benchmark as early
as March this year.
Another
system, the Tianhe-3, is said to have achieved an almost identical
score, but it’s unclear precisely when testing took place in this
instance.
Although
little is known about the architecture of the Wuxi machine, the
Tianhe-3 is known to be based on silicon from Chinese company Phytium,
boosted by a matrix accelerator.
The
record for world’s fastest supercomputer is currently held by a
Japanese machine, Fugaku. It snatched the crown in June 2020 with a
score of 416 petaFLOPs (or 0.416 exaFLOPs), almost three times the peak
performance of the previous leader, IBM Summit.
Since
then, Fugaku’s lead has widened with the addition of a further 330,000
cores, boosting the performance to 442 petaFLOPS. However, if reports
are accurate, both Tianhe-3 and Sunway Oceanlite outstrip the current
leader by almost a factor of three.
The
arrival of exascale supercomputers is expected to unlock a host of
opportunities in a variety of sectors. For example, this level of
performance will accelerate time to discovery in fields such as clinical
medicine and genomics, which require vast amounts of computing power to
conduct molecular modelling and genome sequencing.
Artificial
intelligence (AI) is another cross-disciplinary domain that will be
transformed with the arrival of exascale computing. The ability to
analyze ever-larger datasets will improve the ability of AI models to
make accurate forecasts that could be applied in virtually any context,
from cybersecurity to ecommerce, manufacturing, logistics, banking and more.
As the US and China battle for AI supremacy, the arrival of two
exascale-capable systems in China before the US can debut its own
upcoming exascale machine (“Frontier”), will be a kick in the teeth for
the Biden administration, especially given they are built on Chinese
silicon.
It’s unclear why China did not submit its machines to the bi-annual Top 500 supercomputer rankings
earlier this year, but the geopolitical climate almost certainly has
something to do with it. The next edition of the rankings is due to be
published next month.
Chinese researchers achieve quantum advantage in two mainstream routes
Ranjan KC
Científicos
chinos desarrollaron un nuevo ordenador cuántico con 113 fotones
detectados - Con 113 fotones, "Jiuzhang 2.0" puede implementar a gran
escala GBS SEPTILLONES de veces más rápido que la supercomputadora
existente más rápida del mundo y 10 mil millones de veces más rápido que
su versión anterior, "Jiuzhang.
By Global Times
Chinese research teams have made marked progress in superconducting
quantum computing and photonics quantum computing technology, making
China the only country to achieve quantum computational advantage in two
mainstream technical routes, while the US has only achieved a "quantum
advantage" in superconducting quantum computing, analysts say.
Quantum advantage is a scientific concept that states a quantum computer
can do things in some fields beyond the capability of non-quantum or
classical computers, but it will never replace classical computers, Yuan
Lanfeng, a research fellow at the Hefei National Laboratory for
Physical Sciences at the Microscale of the University of Science and
Technology of China (USTC), told the Global Times on Tuesday.
The
research team, headed by the renowned Chinese quantum physicist Pan
Jianwei, designed a 66-qubit programmable superconducting quantum
computing system, naming it "Zuchongzhi 2.1," after the noted 5th
century Chinese mathematician and astronomer, significantly enhancing
the quantum advantage, the Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday.
"Zuchongzhi
2.1," is 10 million times faster than the current fastest supercomputer
and its calculation complexity is more than 1 million times higher than
Google's Sycamore processor. It's the first time that China has reached
quantum advantage in a superconducting quantum computing system.
"Zuchongzhi
2.1" has achieved a quantum advantage for the first time compared with
an earlier processor named "Zu Chongzhi", a 62-qubit programmable
superconducting quantum prototype designed by a Chinese research team
from the USTC in May, Lu Chaoyang, a professor of the USTC in Hefei,
capital city of East China's Anhui Province, told the Global Times on
Tuesday.
Pan's team also built a new light-based quantum
computer prototype, "Jiuzhang 2.0," with 113 detected photons, which can
implement large-scale Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) 1 septillion times
faster than the world's fastest existing supercomputer, according to the
Xinhua News Agency.
Yuan said that the number of detected photons for "Jiuzhang 2.0"
increased to 113 from the previous 76 when the quantum computer
prototype "Jiuzhang" first came out, which was a major technical
breakthrough, as the difficulty increases exponentially with each
additional detected photon.
The light-based quantum computer
prototype "Jiuzhang" was built in December 2020, led by Pan and Lu, and
demonstrated a quantum advantage
Yet another key obstacle on the road to quantum has been conquered.
Otro
obstáculo clave en el camino a la cuántica ha sido conquistado. Un
equipo de investigación con la Universidad de Copenhague de Dinamarca ha
diseñado el primer sistema de computación cuántica del mundo que
permite el funcionamiento simultáneo de todos sus qubits sin amenazar la
coherencia cuántica. La investigación está siendo aclamada como un gran
avance, eliminando uno de los obstáculos clave restantes para la
escalada cuántica y su eventual despliegue convencional.
China’s Climate Goals Hinge on a $440 Billion Nuclear Buildout
China is planning at least 150 new reactors in the next 15 years, more than the
rest of the world has built in the past 35.
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