China achieves quantum supremacy in major computing breakthrough

China has achieved a major breakthrough in quantum computing, performing a calculation that would take a modern-day supercomputer billions of years to complete.

The milestone, known as quantum supremacy, comes just over a year after Google became the first in the world to achieve the same feat.

The team from the University of Science and Technology of China built a quantum computer capable of performing computations nearly 100 trillion times faster than the world’s most powerful supercomputer, according to a research paper published in the journal Science.

China’s leading quantum computing researchers revealed that their next-generation machine used a completely different set up compared to Google, proving that there are multiple approaches to this nascent technology.

The researchers claimed their prototype was 10 billion times faster than Google’s machine, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.