Baku, March 6, AZERTAC

A team of Chinese scientists on Monday unveiled Zuchongzhi 3.0, a 105-qubit superconducting quantum processor prototype with speed gains in the quadrillions over leading supercomputers for one specific task: quantum random circuit sampling, according to Xinhua.

The team's groundbreaking result has positioned China at the forefront of quantum supremacy amid rapid global tech progress.

But what does this leap mean, and how could it redefine the future of computing?

The United States and China are both leading contributors to quantum innovation, advancing the field in parallel and driving breakthroughs that are redrawing computational frontiers.

In 2019, Google's Sycamore declared a quantum advantage over traditional supercomputers in solving a sampling task in 200 seconds, but Chinese scientists challenged that advantage in 2023, cutting the time to 17 seconds using classical chips and algorithms.

Meanwhile, China hit new quantum computing milestones with Zuchongzhi 2.0 and Jiuzhang 3.0. By 2024, Sycamore had again highlighted its quantum supremacy with expanded qubit counts.

But this week, Zuchongzhi 3.0 surpassed Sycamore's latest scores by six orders of magnitude, setting the highest benchmark for a superconducting system ever publicly reported.

Over the past 80 years, computing has reshaped our understanding of the world and daily life, but unlocking its next frontier hinges on overcoming the bottlenecks of processing power as the field approaches the physical limits of Moore's Law.

Quantum tech is broadly considered to be the front line of technology, poised to trigger a transformative breakthrough akin to that of fusion energy.

And scientists racing to embrace this future have laid out some critical milestones.

Zhu Xiaobo, the chief designer of Zuchongzhi 3.0, has outlined a three-stage roadmap for the development of practical quantum computers, the first of which has seen China and the United States showcase capabilities that surpass those of classical supercomputers, such as quantum random sampling carried out primarily through qubit scaling. But these advances remain niche demonstrations with minimal real-world impact.

In the second stage, researchers around the world are aiming to pinpoint a handful of practical quantum applications -- like quantum chemistry and drug discovery, now largely bolstered by supercomputers and AI algorithms -- within five years, translating quantum advantages into tangible productivity gains, according to Zhu.

The third stage will involve achieving universal fault-tolerant quantum computing, which requires suppressing qubit error rates to extreme lows. Given current physical qubit error rates and engineering hurdles, Zhu estimates this milestone remains about 15 years away.

Now, in early development of quantum computing, the front-runners and best technical approaches have not yet been consolidated, meaning "any country that is able to deploy quantum tech first will have a first-mover advantage," according to a report published by the Mercator Institute for China Studies last December.