Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

Chapter 219 Application Implementation

Four weeks after the Tianyan quantum computer was fully unveiled, Zuocheng convened a special meeting on quantum empowerment.

The screen displays real-time data for five business lines: the Tianqiong satellite system, brain-computer interface, autonomous driving, space photovoltaics, and quantum computing center. Each line is labeled with a number representing the expected performance improvement after quantum computing is integrated.

Shen Yiming stood up and opened the technical report. "The true value of quantum computing isn't in benchmark scores, it's in acceleration. The same algorithm, the quantum version is hundreds to tens of thousands of times faster than the classical version. Now we need to integrate Tianyan into every business line of 402."

He clicked on the first module: the Sky Dome satellite system.

With 1,200 satellites in orbit, each generating thousands of status data points per second, orbit adjustments, frequency band scheduling, and link switching—calculations that would take tens of minutes on a classical computer—the global optimization is rewritten in a quantum version after accessing Tianyan, allowing the reallocation of all satellite orbits and frequency bands to be completed within three seconds.

Shen Yiming released comparative data: "A single global scheduling session has been reduced from thirty-seven minutes to eight seconds. Response speed has improved by nearly three hundred times."

Zuo Cheng continued, "The time it used to take forty minutes for a satellite to detect an interference source and complete avoidance has been reduced to eight seconds. The entire network responds the instant the interference occurs. The availability of Sky Dome Communications has increased from 99.7% to 99.97%. For over 100 million terminals across the network, each terminal will have an additional two and a half hours of connectivity per year."

The second module is the brain-computer interface. Neural signal decoding uses a deep neural network, processing over 20,000 neurons of three-dimensional spatiotemporal data per second. The processing latency on a classical computer is 15 milliseconds, but after connecting to Tianyan, it drops to 0.3 milliseconds.

Yu Ying added, "0.3 milliseconds means that real-time decoding of neural signals becomes possible. The error rate is compressed from 3.2 percent to below 1.7 percent."

The changes to the autonomous driving module are more intuitive. Calculating the globally optimal path for 100 vehicles within a 5-kilometer radius, which takes three seconds with the classic algorithm, takes only 0.04 seconds with the quantum version. The probability of a collision has decreased from three in a million to one in a billion.

Materials simulations for space photovoltaics are also being re-run on Tianyan. The optimization of the band structure of perovskite and quantum dots, which previously required a week of calculations to produce results in just forty minutes, has now been revised. Data from Weijia shows that the theoretical upper limit of photovoltaic conversion efficiency has been increased by nearly two percentage points.

After reviewing all the reports, Zuo Cheng wrote four words on the whiteboard: "Quantum Empowerment."

Then he turned around. "Tianyan is currently using less than half of its computing power, with over six hundred qubits idle. I'm saying that this computing power shouldn't just be used internally."

Han Lu looked up. "You need to launch the quantum cloud service."

"Galaxy Cloud Quantum, launching today."

The core of the plan is simple: Tianyan computing power will be made available to any research institution or enterprise worldwide via the cloud, at a cost of 0.5 yuan per quantum bit per hour.

Han Lu did the math. "The construction cost of Tianyan exceeds two billion, and the electricity and cooling costs for one day of operation alone amount to hundreds of thousands. At this price, the return on investment will be very slow."

Zuo Cheng said, "You won't make money in the short term."

"Then what are you after?"

He answered with data. "There are no more than twenty usable quantum computers in the world. Without users, there is no data; without data, quantum algorithm iterations rely on guesswork. IBM and Google's quantum error correction technology is stalled largely because there is too little real-world operational data. A zero-barrier, low-cost approach allows for the accumulation of one million qubit-hours of real-world data in just six months. The company possessing the world's largest amount of quantum usage data will be the standard-setter for the quantum era."

"This isn't a cloud computing business; it's a data business."

Han Lu was silent for a few seconds. "Investors won't agree. They can't see the annealing process, they only see the profit and loss statement."

"Show them this." Zuo Cheng turned to the next page. "On the first day of Xinghe Cloud Quantum's launch, over a thousand institutions worldwide applied. These include the State Key Laboratory of Quantum Information at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Condensed Matter Physics Group at MIT, the Max Planck Institute's Center for Quantum Materials, and the computational chemistry department of a top German pharmaceutical company. These are not ordinary users; they represent the forefront of quantum computing research globally."

"By using our quantum computer, they are essentially using our ecosystem. They become accustomed to our interfaces and toolchain, and if they want to switch later, the cost will be higher than building a new quantum computer."

Han Lu closed her notebook. "This is the correct answer."

Galaxy Cloud Quantum officially launched a week later. At the launch event, Han Lu announced three things: "Tianyan's entire computing power is open to the world. The price is 0.5 yuan per quantum bit per hour, the lowest in the world. All quantum computing results are uploaded to the blockchain in real time for verification by anyone."

The third point is the most impactful. 402 has integrated blockchain-based notarization into the underlying layer of its quantum cloud. From the very first computation, every output is immutably notified. This means that no one can forge quantum computing results, and no one can question 402's quantum computing outputs.

In the first week after its launch, applications surged from 1,000 to 7,000. Within 24 hours, more than 2,000 computational tasks were received, ranging from biopharmaceutical molecule matching to financial risk control Monte Carlo simulations, and from cryptographic elliptic curve decomposition to astrophysical orbit calculations.

When the data came out on the seventh day, Shen Yiming sent a message to the internal group: "In seven days, the world used over 10,000 qubit hours, equivalent to the combined usage of IBM and Google Quantum Cloud over six months."

Han Lu replied, "There are still over five hundred companies in the queue."

Zuo Cheng sat in his office, looking at the backend panel of Xinghe Cloud Quantum. On the screen, research institutions in forty-three countries and regions around the world were simultaneously using Tianyan. With each lit dot, the new ecosystem of quantum computing gained another root.

On the system panel, the progress bar for the eighth branch jumped from 67% to 81%. Data feedback from the quantum cloud service is accelerating the accumulation of leaves.

He switched the screen. On the civilization perception interface, the beam of light in the direction of quantum computing was no longer just one. More than a dozen new sub-beams of light had grown around the main beam of light. Quantum algorithms, quantum software, quantum applications—the entire ecosystem had been activated by Tianyan's open strategy.

But the progress bar stopped at 81%. It wasn't stuck; it was waiting for something.

Zuo Cheng turned off the control panel. Outside the window, the night view of Hangzhou was ablaze with lights. On the screen, the Starry Cloud Quantum control console was still quietly receiving quantum computing requests from around the world. Each request was not just a single computation; it was the most brilliant minds on the planet using 402's quantum infrastructure to build something entirely new.

Three days later, Xingheyun Quantum's cumulative usage exceeded 50,000 qubit-hours. On the same day, the computational chemistry team of the German pharmaceutical company completed a protein folding simulation on Tianyan, a problem that had plagued the industry for a decade, and their preprint was featured on the homepage of Nature magazine. The first line of the acknowledgments reads: "Thanks to the Tianyan quantum computer at the 402 Quantum Computing Center."

Han Lu posted the link to the paper in the group chat. "Take a look at this," Shen Yiming replied. "The progress bar is moving."