Quantum algorithm

Quantum mechanics

Computational science

Quantum computer

Quantum error correction

Parallel computing

Computer science

Quantum sort

Physics

Computer engineering

Quantum

Qubit

Quantum simulator

Superconducting quantum computing

Physical Review Letters

Scaling up to a large number of qubits with high-precision control is essential in the demonstrations of quantum computational advantage to exponentially outpace the classical hardware and algorithmic improvements. Here, we develop a two-dimensional programmable superconducting quantum processor, Zuchongzhi, which is composed of 66 functional qubits in a tunable coupling architecture. To characterize the performance of the whole system, we perform random quantum circuits sampling for benchmarking, up to a system size of 56 qubits and 20 cycles. The computational cost of the classical simulation of this task is estimated to be 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than the previous work on 53-qubit Sycamore processor [Nature 574, 505 (2019)NATUAS0028-083610.1038/s41586-019-1666-5. We estimate that the sampling task finished by Zuchongzhi in about 1.2 h will take the most powerful supercomputer at least 8 yr. Our work establishes an unambiguous quantum computational advantage that is infeasible for classical computation in a reasonable amount of time. The high-precision and programmable quantum computing platform opens a new door to explore novel many-body phenomena and implement complex quantum algorithms.

Strong Quantum Computational Advantage Using a Superconducting Quantum Processor