HEFEI, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- On both sides of Yunfei Road in the eastern Chinese city of Hefei, there are dozens of quantum technology companies that have achieved a wide variety of cutting-edge scientific results. The road is now known as "Quantum Street" to many locals.
In the control center of a quantum metropolitan area network (MAN) at QuantumCTek Co., Ltd, key holding and consumption data is among the information updated on a large screen in real-time.
The MAN was launched in August, and now leads the country in terms of scale, as well as in number of users and applications.
With eight core sites, 159 access sites, and a 1,147-kilometer-long optical fiber, the MAN allows the encrypted transmission of data through the e-government's extranet, providing services to the government, banks and enterprises.
Online platforms, including one that processes government-related information and another for the city's big-data services, have been launched on the quantum network. More platforms will be transferred to the network in the future.
"We now render services to the finance, energy and healthcare sectors, among others," said Zhou Lei, Party secretary of QuantumCTek. "Hefei is now making further efforts to build the city into a testing ground for the transformation of more scientific and technological achievements."
At Hefei Origin Quantum Computing Technology Co., Ltd, staff from the research and development team were seen discussing how to upgrade the application of the company's quantum cloud platform to make it easier for users to operate.
"The biggest symbol of our industrialization is that we have three chains -- the production chain, the industry application chain, and the science education chain," said Wang Bo, head of Origin Quantum's marketing department.
"Taking the industry application chain as an example, the ecological application of quantum computing covers finance, biochemistry, medicine, intelligent manufacturing and other fields," Wang said. "The quantum computing application we developed in cooperation with banks is based on the needs of the enterprise side."
Quantum technology enterprises on Quantum Street have preliminarily formed an industrial chain covering quantum communication, quantum measurement, quantum computing, and key quantum components.
In 2021, the output value of core quantum computing enterprises in the Hefei hi-tech zone, where Quantum Street is located, was 577 million yuan (about 81 million U.S. dollars), and patents related to the quantum information industry in the zone accounted for 12.1 percent of the national total.
"The core capability of our self-developed electronic paramagnetic resonance spectrometer is detecting the content of free radicals in substances," said He Yu, chairman of CIQTEK Co., Ltd.
"The free radical content of beer, cosmetics and other products directly determines the quality, so our spectrometer is of great value to the quality control of these products," He said.
Established six years ago, CIQTEK has become the country's first unicorn in the field of quantum precision measurement. "Our products have been delivered to hundreds of domestic customers across various industries, and to customers in other countries," He said. "We will continue to promote more of our products so that they can be used everywhere from the laboratory to households."
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