Record-breaking quantum computer has more than 1000 qubits

The world’s first quantum computer to exceed 1000 qubits has more than double that of the earlier report holder, IBM’s Osprey machine, which has 433 qubits. Though having more qubits doesn’t essentially imply higher efficiency, massive numbers of them can be wanted for future error-free quantum computer systems which are helpful, in contrast to at present’s noise-filled analysis machines.

The largest quantum computer systems, similar to these from IBM and Google, use superconducting wires cooled to extraordinarily low temperatures for his or her quantum bits, or qubits. But the record-breaking machine from California-based start-up Atom Computing, which has 1180 qubits, makes use of impartial atoms trapped by lasers in a 2-dimensional grid.

One benefit of this design is that it’s simple to scale up the system and add many more qubits into the grid, says Rob Hays, CEO of Atom Computing. Any helpful quantum computer sooner or later that is freed from errors, a characteristic known as fault tolerance, will want at the very least tens of hundreds of devoted error-correcting qubits working alongside the programmable qubits, he says.

“If we’re only going to scale by dozens of qubits, like most of the trapped ion and superconducting systems have been scaling up until now, it’s going to take a very long time to get to the fault tolerant era,” says Hays. “With the neutral atom approach and the speed of scaling that we have, we will be able to get there much more quickly.” Hays says the crew goals to multiply the quantity of qubits within the machine by round 10 each couple of years or so.

Unlike typical computing bits, which may have a price of 1 or 0 and are largely interchangeable, qubits are more various, having a spread of various properties relying on how they’re made.

Neutral atom qubits lend themselves higher to quantum entanglement, a wierd quantum impact the place qubits are linked in order that measuring a property of 1 qubit reveals that of the opposite. They are additionally more steady, with qubits in Atom Computing’s machine protecting their quantum state from collapsing – a characteristic known as fault tolerance, which is important for error correction – for nearly a minute. IBM’s Osprey, for instance, has coherence occasions of round 70 to 80 microseconds.

These lengthy coherence occasions are as a result of ytterbium atoms that Hays and his crew use as qubits. Most impartial atom machines use an atom’s electron because the quantum ingredient with which to do computing, however this may be simply affected by the highly effective lasers used to carry it in place. With ytterbium, a quantum property of the atom’s nucleus known as spin can be utilized, which is way much less delicate to disturbances. “The nucleus just doesn’t interact with the outside environment as strongly as the electron does,” says Ben Bloom at Atom Computing.

Because qubits have so many various options, it may be tough to match throughout totally different machines, however Bloom says Atom Computing’s machine is comparable in processing potential to IBM’s, although the corporate has but to launch figures on this.

The crew hopes to supply the machine to clients subsequent 12 months for cloud computing purposes, just like what firms like IBM do at present. “Atom Computing’s machine can’t currently perform computing operations on all the qubits at the same time, which will be required for fully error corrected machines,” says Bloom.

“There’s multiple groups now building systems that will have 1000, and even several thousand, atomic qubits,” says Mark Saffman on the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “This is really where the frontier of the field is now, with this 1000-plus scale that people are developing.”

However, more particulars of how the machine works will should be launched by Atom Computing earlier than it may be correctly assessed, says Saffman, similar to what number of of its qubits can be utilized and have logical operations carried out on them.