[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong (홍진주)] Toshiba of Japan unveiled an algorithm for a “quantum-inspired computer” that simulates quantum calculations on classical computers, and said it improved computing speed and accuracy at the same time.

CoinPost, a blockchain media outlet, reported on April 8 that Toshiba announced the new algorithm and said it delivers up to 100 times faster computing speeds than existing methods, with accuracy close to 100 percent.

A quantum-inspired computer is not equipment that physically implements quantum mechanics. It simulates the mathematical behavior of quantum systems on classical computers. Unlike quantum computers, it can be used immediately in current server environments without separate quantum hardware, which is seen as an advantage.

The key to the performance improvement is the concept of the “edge of chaos.” Toshiba designed the algorithm by focusing on the boundary region where calculation results move between regularity and irregularity while searching for an optimal solution. It said this improved the efficiency of solution searches and boosted accuracy at the same time. It cited an example in which a problem that took about 1.3 seconds on an existing model was cut to under 0.01 seconds.

Hayato Fujita (후지타 하야토), a senior fellow at Toshiba, said, “We achieved speed and precision that could be difficult even for quantum computers 50 years from now.”

Toshiba cited a range of applications including new drug development, financial asset allocation and logistics optimization. These areas often face combinatorial optimization problems, which require finding the best option among countless combinations and can sharply increase computing workloads. In new drug development, it was reported that narrowing down promising candidates from vast combinations of compounds creates heavy computational burdens, and reducing the number of calculations can lower time and costs. The company plans to verify the algorithm’s effectiveness by problem type and resolve remaining tasks, then push for practical use within 1 to 2 years.

As quantum technology advances rapidly, the cryptocurrency market is also becoming more wary. Google recently suggested in a white paper that quantum computers at a certain level could decrypt Bitcoin’s elliptic curve cryptography (ECC-256) within minutes, and proposed 2029 as the time to prepare for a transition to post-quantum cryptography.

Still, some in the industry argue Bitcoin’s quantum risk is not only a technical issue. Grayscale Investments analyzed that if quantum 대응 for Bitcoin requires a protocol change, forming community consensus could be a bigger obstacle than technical implementation.