What if a computer had exponential computing speed and perfect accuracy?
Professor Duncan Haldane once tried to answer this question. In the autumn of 2016, this physicist and two of his friends won the Nobel Prize in Physics for “theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter”!
Simply put, through various rigorous experiments, they found that even the smallest microscopic matter could exhibit macroscopic properties and have a topological phase.
To understand what this meant, it required an understanding of topology.
Everyone knew that mathematicians looked at problems from a different perspective. They often saw things by their essence. Topology was a discipline that studied the geometric shapes and spaces that remained unchanged through transformations.
One of the most classical topology examples was that a coffee mug and doughnut were topologically the same, because just like a donut, the coffee mug had a hole in its handle.
Because they both had one hole, one could turn a donut into a coffee mug through a smooth deformation process and vice versa… Even though this might seem incomprehensible to most people, or even inexplicable, but in fact, this mathematical transformation method was a contributor to many interesting discoveries in other fields.
This was especially true in the field of physics and materials, many amazing discoveries in the 1980s were derived from topological methods, which provided a theoretical basis.
For a long time, people were accustomed to applying topology to solve macro-scale problems. It was still unconfirmed as to whether topology could be used for subatomic particles such as electrons and photons.
Because these tiny particles were affected by the peculiar laws of quantum physics, their sizes, positions, and even shapes were constantly in an uncertain state.
However, the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics gave a definitive answer to this question.
Which was that these subatomic particles in the microscopic world carried topological characteristics!
This theory obviously had no impact on people’s ordinary daily life, but this opened a new world for the field of electronic engineering!
Through the wonderful quantum world, these materials displayed amazing stability and remarkable properties in a special matter phase. The most typical example was topological insulators.
This characteristic was found in graphene materials, which directly led to the birth of the SG-1 superconducting material carbon-based chips.
On the other hand, this property also promoted quantum computing research.
A quantum computer used the principle that subatomic particles could be in different states at the same time, and they could store information in something called a quantum bit (qubit). Because of this characteristic, quantum computers could solve problems exponentially faster than traditional computers.
However, the problem was that the subatomic particles that stored the data were fragile and unstable. Even a slight disturbance could change its state.
That was exactly what “decoherence” was. In a quantum mechanics environment, any disturbance could change or even collapse the entangled qubit state!
One of the ways to solve this problem was to use either noise reduction, or anti-interference technology, or both. Regardless of which technical route was adopted, they had to find a way to stabilize the subatomic particles.
This was one of the main problems in quantum computer research and development.
It was also something Lu Zhou was researching…
Jinling Institute for Advanced Study, third level underground laboratory.
The empty room that was used as a spare sample storage room was now being filled with newly purchased equipment.
These included multifunctional physical property measurement machines, step meters, vibrating sample magnetometers, high and low-temperature magnetoresistance testers, and In Situ Freeze Dryer. Although this wasn’t a complete set of equipment, it had all of the essentials.
Also, in addition to these few essential pieces of equipment for researching carbon materials, he also had a UV curing 3D printer with an accuracy of 8 microns. This was mainly used to print the plastic molds used in experiments.
A thin film the size of a thumb was carefully placed in the magnetron sputtering atomic deposition machine. Lu Zhou carefully used the data from the experiment to set new experimental parameters on the computer.
After finishing all of this, he finally breathed a sigh of relief and pressed the enter button on the keyboard.
A green signal light turned on. A machine inside the laboratory began to operate.
Lu Zhou carried his coffee mug and sat down on his chair. He looked at his watch and wondered what he could do to kill some time. Suddenly, Xiao Ai’s drone flew over from the side.
Xiao Ai: [Master, Master! Something super amazing just happened! (≧ω≦*)]
Lu Zhou looked at the small screen floating in the air and asked, “You leveled up?”
Xiao Ai: [What? You knew? (°△°|||)]
Lu Zhou: “…”
Did this thing really level up… or level down?
Lu Zhou sighed and ignored the artificial retardation. He closed his eyes and went inside the system space.
The accumulation of artificial intelligence experience points was synced with the information science experience points. As soon as Xiao Ai’s level rose to level 4, his information science level went from level 4 to level 5.
Even if he wasn’t in the system space, he could still see the notification for his upgrade.
[…]
[G. Information science: level 5 (0/300,000)]
After Lu Zhou looked at his characteristic panel, he rubbed his chin.
Just like he had speculated, he could gain artificial intelligence experience points by letting Xiao Ai observe the behaviors of humans in the virtual reality world. In fact, it seemed like artificial intelligence depended on sociological knowledge.
However, Lu Zhou didn’t pay too much attention to Xiao Ai’s progress. After checking his characteristic panel in the system space, he went back to the real world.
He opened his eyes and stared at the drone floating in front of him.
Xiao Ai: [Master, Master, aren’t you going to praise Xiao Ai? (*/ω\*)]
Lu Zhou: “Yeah, nicely done.”
Xiao Ai: [Thank you!]
Lu Zhou pretended not to see the text on the screen. He looked at his watch as he spoke.
“… I think it’s almost time.”
The light on the machine nearby went from green to red.
Lu Zhou immediately said, “Xiao Ai, turn on the in situ freeze dryer.”
Xiao Ai: [Okay… (○`3′○)]
Even though Xiao Ai seemed reluctant, it still obediently followed Lu Zhou’s orders.
Lu Zhou felt like his little buddy was becoming more and more sentient… Almost like it was becoming more and more humanlike?
Lu Zhou wasn’t sure if this was a good thing.
After all, the way that artificial intelligence processed information and the way the human brain processed information were completely different. One used logic to determine emotions, while the other used emotions to drive logic.
Maybe artificial intelligence is a new species?
It’s too early to come to a conclusion.
As Xiao Ai’s “guardian”, Lu Zhou was responsible for monitoring Xiao Ai’s growth.
But so far, it seemed like the little guy was still quite obedient. Xiao Ai was playing the role of an assistant, both for Lu Zhou’s life and his scientific research. Xiao Ai always obeyed his orders without compromising.
Maybe I’m worrying too much?
With Xiao Ai’s help, Lu Zhou transferred the lyophilized carbon-based chip sample from the magnetron sputtering atomic deposition machine to the in situ freeze dryer. He then used a metallurgical microscope to carefully analyze the film before recording the experiment results.
He had more than 30,000 general points. According to the system, he needed 120,000 general points to obtain a full set of blueprints for quantum computing technology.
In fact, this number was bloated.
If he divided the problems and solved part of the technology, he could reduce the general points cost by more than 80%!
So far, he had spent 20,000 general points to overcome several key research bottlenecks. He used his knowledge of carbon materials, Mott insulators, and Majorana fermions to solve some of the foundational problems.
For example, he layered a Majorana fermion topological insulator with a single atom width superconductor. This did not affect the stability of the Majorana fermions.
By using a special topological phase material, the subatomic atoms could be shielded from interference.
Basically, the qubits formed would not corrupt due to some small and local interference. It was far more stable than general qubits, allowing quantum computers to calculate the answers that one wanted in a more accurate and efficient manner.
This saved Lu Zhou at least 100,000 general points.
Thus, he could use his general points on more difficult problems.
This was one of the reasons why “knowledge is power”.
After carefully completing the last step of the experiment, Lu Zhou placed a layer of a translucent graphene sheet on the circuit mold he prepared in advance.
He had a sincere smile on his face, as if he were staring at a piece of artwork.
“All of the performance tests meet our expectations.
“This is perfect!
“As expected, Majorana fermion is the best choice for quantum computing!”
All that was left to do was to test if the 20,000 general points he spent was worth it.
As Lu Zhou was about to press the power button, his heart was nearly beating out of his chest.
The second he pressed the button, the film-like computer chip began to run the preset script. The signal was processed by the logic circuit and was then transmitted to the display. Soon, a line of characters was presented on the display.
[Hello, world.]
When Lu Zhou saw the characters on the screen, he clenched his fists and nearly jumped out of his chair.
“Yes!”
Lu Zhou was taken aback by his own reaction. He quickly began checking the operating conditions of the machine.
After he saw the “film-like” computer chip operating stably and remaining impervious to the qubit entanglement collapse, Lu Zhou finally had an assured smile on his face.
Looks like this time…
We did it!
