New Chinese optical quantum chip allegedly 1,000x faster than Nvidia GPUs (www.tomshardware.com)

Chinese photonics startup CHIPX has unveiled an all‑optical quantum computing chip it calls the first “scalable, industrial‑grade” quantum platform, claiming it runs certain AI tasks “1,000× faster” than Nvidia GPUs. The device is a monolithic photonic chip built with a new co‑packaging technology that integrates photons and electronics on a 6‑inch silicon wafer containing more than 1,000 optical components. CHIPX says systems using the chips can be deployed in about two weeks (vs. months for traditional quantum rigs), can be tiled like GPU clusters, and in principle scaled toward 1 million qubits. Current production is limited — fabs reportedly make ~12,000 wafers/year at roughly 350 chips per wafer — and the firm faces material‑yield challenges. Technically, this is a photonic quantum approach: information is carried by photons rather than matter‑based qubits, which promises low heat, high bandwidth and room‑temperature operability for certain architectures. That makes the idea attractive for energy‑hungry AI datacenters and for rapid, modular scaling. However, the 1,000× GPU claim is unverified and likely task‑specific; photonic quantum hardware still confronts manufacturing, error‑correction and benchmark transparency hurdles before it can displace classical accelerators. If real, the advance would intensify global competition in quantum hardware and accelerate investment, but broad applicability remains to be demonstrated.