In Russia, a 12-qubit processor was created for the first time: it can determine the type of wine

The new device was successfully tested by young scientists

The first superconducting 12-qubit processor was successfully tested at the Moscow Physics and Technology Institute. It is designed for quantum machine learning, for example, it was recently tested to determine the type of wine based on many relevant characteristics of wines.

Quantum processors are being created by scientists all over the world. Time will pass, and they will be used in quantum computers, solving problems that are beyond the power of electronic computers, that is, conventional computers. For example, they will be able to accurately simulate the weather or carry out complex mathematical calculations. Another application for such processors will be quantum machine learning — methods through which a machine is taught to “think” and act like a person based on experience gained or a large amount of new input data.

The difference between a quantum computer and a conventional one. If the unit of information in a classical computer is a bit — an element that can be either “on” or “off”, then in a quantum device this role is played by a qubit, which can be in two states simultaneously. This increases its computing power. The most advanced technology today is considered to be the technology for creating qubits based on superconducting circuits. The record holder in this class is considered to be the 433-qubit quantum processor Quantum Condor from IBM.

The processor created at MIPT, despite the small number of qubits compared to world leaders, has world-class characteristics: average time per quantum operation takes him only 50 nanoseconds. This allows calculations to be made with high accuracy.

According to the head of the research team, Professor Oleg Astafiev, the creation of a 12-qubit processor in Russia is a big step forward, despite sanctions restrictions.

Recently, scientists tested a quantum integrated circuit in practice, making it the “heart” «a prototype of a quantum computing device consisting of a classical computer and a quantum «accelerator». With its help, they tried to run learning algorithms for a quantum “neural network” that can determine the type of wine by its chemical composition and diagnose breast cancer.

Receiving data on the new processor, scientists compare them with the results obtained earlier on 8-qubit processor.

So far, according to the developers, the invention can only be used for research purposes. Its practical use will only become possible when the processor is scaled to 100 qubits.

The scientists next plan to produce a 16-qubit processor at the end of 2024.