A consortium of Russian financiers and science institutions plans to invest $16 million in a project for a super-powerful quantum computer, the Izvestya newspaper reported. The joint project by Vnesheconombank, VEB Innovations, the Advanced Research Foundation, Moscow State University and the Digital Economy organization, will attempt to build the cutting edge machine in five years, according to the report.
Sergey Garbuk, Deputy General Director of the Advanced Research Foundation, told Izvestia that new algorithms will be created to solve specific problems.
“Without adequate mathematical support, quantum computers will not have practical significance. Creating quantum algorithms will allow us to speak about a fundamentally new quality of solving such problems of great computational complexity as modeling human intellectual abilities, optimal distribution of transport and logistic flows, weather forecasting, and so on,” Garbuk said.
The consortium’s participants have to create a computer that will reach the “quantum limit” – its speed will exceed the capabilities of existing systems many times over. The association will be open to others, it could include various institutions and universities with developments in a related field.
Vnesheconombank consortium, VEB Innovations, the Advanced Research Foundation, Moscow State University and the Digital Economy organization signed an agreement on creating a 50-qubit quantum computer in Russia on February 15, at the Sochi-2018 Russian Investment Forum.
Quantum computers are the next generation of super-powerful computers which take advantage of the ability of subatomic particles to exist in more than one state at any time. Due to the way the tiniest of particles behave, operations can be done much more quickly and use less energy than classical computers.
