British scientists claim to have created the world’s best-performing quantum computing chip, which could be integrated into a practical quantum computer by 2027.
This innovative chip features an integrated control unit to manage qubits and can be mass-produced using standard semiconductor manufacturing techniques, unlike conventional quantum chips.
The key to this technology lies in its handling of quantum bits, or qubits, which are the basic units of information in quantum computing.
One method of controlling qubits in quantum computers is through trapped ion technology. This involves isolating individual charged atoms (ions) within an electromagnetic field, known as an ion trap, and using lasers to precisely control their quantum state. This method allows the ions to be manipulated and used as qubits for storing and processing quantum information.
While effective at stabilizing qubits, trapped ion technology is not scalable or practical due to the high costs and complexity of laser technology.
However, Oxford Ionics has developed a new chip that eliminates the need for lasers entirely. Their patented "Electronic Qubit Control" system regulates the state of trapped ions. By integrating everything needed to control the qubits into the silicon, the new chip is more reliable and easier to produce at scale, according to the scientists.
In tests, the new chip outperformed existing record-holders by a factor of two, while using ten times fewer qubits, the researchers claimed. These findings were published on July 10 on the pre-print server arXiv.
"When building a quantum computer, performance is as crucial as size — increasing the number of qubits is meaningless if they do not yield accurate results," said Tom Harty, co-founder and CTO at Oxford Ionics.
"We have now proven that our approach has delivered the highest performance in quantum computing to date and is at the level needed to begin unlocking the commercial potential of quantum computing. This is an incredibly exciting moment for our team and for the positive impact that quantum computing will have on society." he added.
Oxford Ionics took a "rocket ship approach" for their study, microfabricating an ion trap just a few micrometres across, which formed the basis of their quantum chip.
The chip’s performance was measured by how accurately it could perform operations known as gate fidelities — an indicator of how closely a quantum gate (the building blocks of quantum circuits, akin to logic gates in classical computing) matches its ideal theoretical operation.
The scientists reported that their chip achieved single-qubit gate fidelities of 99.9992% and two-qubit gate fidelities of 99.97% — the highest reported by any quantum chip so far, they claimed — without the need for error correction.
"From the beginning, we adopted a ‘rocket ship’ approach — focusing on building robust technology by solving the most challenging problems first," said Chris Ballance, co-founder and CEO at Oxford Ionics.
"This has involved using novel physics and smart engineering to develop scalable, high-performance qubit chips that do not require error correction to be useful and can be controlled on a classic semiconductor chip. We are now able to focus on the commercialization of our technology and delivering useful quantum computing at scale."
Oxford Ionics will provide the chip architecture to the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) as part of its Quantum Computing Testbed program.
"We are thrilled to see how this technology will be deployed and how we can use these ultra-high-performance qubits for developing algorithms and new applications," said Michael Cuthbert, director of the NQCC.
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