Jiuzhang (Chinese: 九章) is the first photonic quantum computer to claim quantum supremacy. Previously quantum supremacy has been achieved only once in 2019 by Google’s Sycamore, however Google's computer was based on superconducting materials, and not photons.[1]
Jiuzhang was developed by a team from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) led by Pan Jianwei and Lu Chaoyang. The computer is named after Jiuzhang suanshu, an ancient Chinese mathematical classic.
On 3 December 2020, USTC announced in Science that Jiuzhang successfully performed Gaussian boson sampling in 200 seconds (3 minutes 20 seconds), with a maximum of 76 detected photons. The USTC group estimated that it would take 2.5 billion years for the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer to perform the same calculation.[2]