Japan's machine can theoretically make complex calculations 100 times faster than even a conventional supercomputer, but use just 1 kilowatt of power – about what is required by a large microwave oven – for every 10,000 kilowatts consumed by a supercomputer.

Above – Universal logic gates for quantum-dot electron-spin qubits using trapped quantum-well exciton polaritons
Author: Shruti Puri, Peter L. McMahon, and Yoshihisa Yamamoto Publication: Physical Review B Publisher: American Physical Society

Launched on Monday, the creators – the National Institute of Informatics, telecom giant NTT and the University of Tokyo – said they are building a cloud system to house their "quantum neural network" technology.

The quantum cloud will be available at https://qnncloud.com/ starting next Monday.

Stanford University Professor Emeritus Yoshihisa Yamamoto is heading the project.