China creates its largest ever quantum chip — and it could be key to building the nation's own 'quantum cloud'

Scientists in China have developed a 504-qubit quantum computing chip that will be made available to researchers worldwide via a new quantum computing cloud platform.

The new chip, called "Xiaohong," is the biggest built by China to date and is designed to improve systems that manage the behavior and interaction of quantum bits, or qubits, in quantum computers, state-owned China Daily reported. The scientists hope the chip will help to scale up existing quantum computers so they can handle more complex tasks.

Xiaohong was developed by scientists at the Center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Chinese quantum computing company QuantumCTek, which received the first Xiaohong chip, will now reportedly work alongside China Telecom Quantum Group to integrate the 504-qubit chip into a new quantum computer.

This system will then be made available to researchers worldwide via a quantum computing cloud platform developed by China Telecom Quantum Group, according to the report.

Wang Zhen, deputy general manager of China Telecom Quantum Group, said in a statement the new system would "allow users in various fields to conduct research on problems and algorithms of practical value efficiently, and accelerate the application of quantum computing in actual scenarios."

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Xiaohong is designed to meet the performance standards of cloud-enabled quantum computing platforms like those made by IBM or AWS. But it's not intended as a technical rival to cutting-edge U.S. Technology — such as the 1,121-qubit IBM Quantum Condor chip, said Gong Ming, a researcher at the Center for Excellence in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics.