MilestoneQuantum advantageConfirmed
China's Jiuzhang 4.0 reports photonic quantum advantage with up to 3,050 photons
Aug 12, 2025
A USTC-led team in China reported Jiuzhang 4.0, a programmable light-based processor that detected up to 3,050 photons in a sampling task, at 25.6 microseconds per sample. The authors estimate a top supercomputer would need over 10^42 years just to set up the best classical method. Nature published it in May 2026.
Why it matters
Boson sampling has no practical use yet, but each jump in scale tests whether quantum machines can stay ahead of ever-better classical algorithms that try to imitate them.
Sources (2)
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arXiv (Liu et al., USTC)
Robust quantum computational advantage with programmable 3050-photon Gaussian boson sampling
“we report new Gaussian boson sampling (GBS) experiments with 1024 high-efficiency squeezed states injected into a hybrid spatial-temporal encoded, 8176-mode, programmable photonic quantum processor, Jiuzhang 4.0, which produces up to 3050 photon detection events.”
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Chinese Academy of Sciences (Xinhua)
Chinese Scientists Develop "Jiuzhang 4.0," Setting New World Record in Quantum Computing
“Chinese scientists have developed a programmable quantum computing prototype called "Jiuzhang 4.0" that has set a new world record for optical quantum information technology, according to a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.”
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