However this work, which the corporate revealed final week in Nature, is only a first step towards that imaginative and prescient. Aurora used 35 chips to assemble a complete of 12 quantum bits, or qubits. Any helpful purposes of quantum computing proposed to this point would require not less than hundreds of qubits, or probably 1,000,000. By comparability, Google’s quantum laptop Willow, which debuted final yr, has 105 qubits (all constructed on a single chip), and IBM’s Condor has 1,121.
Devesh Tiwari, a quantum computing researcher at Northeastern College, describes Xanadu’s progress in an analogy with constructing a resort. “They’ve constructed a room, and I’m positive they’ll construct a number of rooms,” he says. “However I don’t know if they’ll construct it flooring by flooring.”
Nonetheless, he says, the work is “very promising.”
Xanadu’s 12 qubits could seem to be a paltry quantity subsequent to IBM’s 1,121, however Tiwari says this doesn’t imply that quantum computer systems primarily based on photonics are working behind. In his opinion, the variety of qubits displays the quantity of funding greater than it does the expertise’s promise.
Photonic quantum computer systems supply a number of design benefits. The qubits are much less delicate to environmental noise, says Tiwari, which makes it simpler to get them to retain data for longer. It is usually comparatively easy to attach photonic quantum computer systems through typical fiber optics, as a result of they already use mild to encode data. Networking quantum computer systems collectively is vital to the trade’s imaginative and prescient of a “quantum web” the place completely different quantum units speak to one another. Aurora’s servers additionally don’t have to be stored as cool as superconducting quantum computer systems, says Weedbrook, so that they don’t require as a lot cryogenic expertise. The server racks function at room temperature, though photon-counting detectors nonetheless have to be cryogenically cooled in one other room.
Xanadu just isn’t the one firm pursuing photonic quantum computer systems; others embody PsiQuantum within the US and Quandela in France. Different teams are utilizing supplies like impartial atoms and ions to assemble their quantum programs.
