Diamonds are for error: Chinese team clear ‘error’ hurdle to pave way for quantum computer that could make geniuses of us all

Scientists create world’s first fault-tolerant quantum computer in piece of precious mineral, say nation could have first one for commercial use within a decade.

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The Chinese team have created a new quantum computing system in diamond which they say can continue operating properly in the event of the failure of one or more qubits. A qubit (quantum bit) is how such computers see and store information. The development of quantum computers has been handicapped by two key errors they often encounter that make their results unreliable. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Published: 1:00pm, 9 Dec 2015Updated: 6:05pm, 8 Mar 2018

Chinese scientists have built the world’s first fault-tolerant quantum computer in a piece of diamond and it will eventually be able to find - in the blink of an eye - passwords and other encrypted information that regular computers need years or decades to uncover, they said.

As such, the breakthrough, coupled with other technological advances over the last few years by companies such as IBM, led the team to make a bold and unsettling prediction: The nation’s first quantum computer should be ready for commercial use within a decade.

These are able to sort through huge reams of data to solve complex problems at a much faster rate than traditional computers, but their development has been handicapped by key errors they encounter.

A team of researchers at IBM cleared one of these hurdles in May by building a four-qubit network they said can detect the two most troublesome quantum errors: Bit-flip errors

(when bits change values due to interference) and phase errors (here, the sign of the phase relationship between 0 and 1 can flip when in a superposition state).

Regular computers contend with errors of the first kind but not the second, which are harder to detect and fix.

It was previously not considered possible to deal with both errors at the same time, something required for quantum computers to work properly.