Image: © kody_king/Stock.adobe.com
The ‘groundbreaking’ technology will enable scaling to millions of orchestrated qubits on a single chip, the company said.
The Irish quantum computing company Equal1 has announced what it refers to as a “major breakthrough for the quantum computing industry” by successfully testing the “world’s most complex and coldest” quantum controller chip.
Today (3 December), the UCD spin-out announced the “world’s first” multi-tile quantum controller chip demonstrated in its UnityQ Quantum-System-on-Chip platform.
The chip operates in cryogenic temperatures at 300 millikelvin – or nearly minus 273 degrees Celsius – and is powered by Cortex core microprocessors produced by the British semiconductor company Arm.
According to Equal1, this “groundbreaking technology” will enable scaling to millions of orchestrated qubits on a single chip, improving the scalability of quantum computing.
The new controller chip also has a patented AI enabled qubit adaptive error correction, tuned for each tile under the support and control of the Arm’s Cortex processor.
This approach “facilitates the potential for real-time error correction, combined with the flexibility to utilise current and future types of error correction algorithms”, the company said.
“The vision for Equal1 has been decades in the making,” said Equal1’s president and chief physicist Dirk Leipold. “I am very proud of what we have accomplished over the past 6 years, and I am excited about what the future holds as we launch the era of scalable quantum computing.”
“Quantum commuting has the potential to revolutionise data processing for multiple uses, ranging from complex financial modelling to life-saving drug discovery,” said Dermot O’Driscoll, the vice-president of product solutions for infrastructure business at Arm.
“With the integration of Arm technology at cryogenic temperatures, Equal1 is at the forefront of building a next-generation Quantum System-on-Chip, and we look forward to continuing our work with them to advance the future of quantum computing.”
‘World-leading metrics’ for a qubit silicon chip
Equal 1 said that it has also demonstrated “world-leading” performance for its silicon qubit array chips.
According to the company, its single qubit gate showcased a fidelity – or a measure of the accuracy – of 99.4pc and a gate speed – referring to the duration required to perform a quantum gate operation – of 84 nanoseconds, and a two-qubit gate silicon chip performed at a 98.4pc fidelity and a gate speed of 72 nanoseconds.
The company said it achieved these results on a six-qubit array fabricated on a silicon germanium CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) compatible process.
“Today marks a critical inflection point for Equal1 and the quantum computing industry,” said Elena Blokhina, Equal1’s chief scientific officer.
“Equal1 has always believed that silicon is the vehicle to scale quantum computers and today, with these world leading qubit and control chip results, we have taken a major step towards this vision.”
In 2021, Equal1 announced that it was the first company to demonstrate a fully integrated quantum processor unit (QPU) operating at 3.7 Kelvin.
Earlier this year, Equal1 and Nvidia – one of the world’s most valuable company – announced a collaboration on quantum technology use cases, business models and proofs of concept.
According to the two companies, their joint work will see Equal1’s hybrid silicon classical quantum hardware and its UnityQ quantum system-on-chip combined with Nvidia’s CUDA-Q quantum software platform, focusing on the integration and validation of quantum-classical infrastructure for cloud and data centre deployments.
Founded in 2017 by Leipold and Mike Asker, Equal1 won this year’s Quantum Business Innovation and Growth prize at the Institute of Physics.
Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.
