Scientists established within the Nineteen Nineties that a few of a quantum pc’s qubits may very well be devoted to correcting these errors, and the years since then have been spent trying to find methods to assemble bodily qubits in order that sufficient “logical” qubits are left over to do helpful computing work.
The usual trade pondering has been {that a} chip will want about 1,000,000 bodily qubits to yield a helpful variety of logical qubits.
However AWS mentioned it had constructed a prototype chip that makes use of solely 9 bodily qubits to yield one working logical qubit, due to using what is called a “cat” qubit, so named for physicist Erwin Schrodinger’s well-known thought experiment as an example ideas of quantum mechanics by which an unfortunate cat in a field is each lifeless and alive on the identical time.
Oskar Painter, AWS director of quantum {hardware}, mentioned the AWS strategy may at some point yield helpful computer systems with solely 100,000 qubits somewhat than 1,000,000.
“It ought to enable us to supply between 5 and 10 occasions decrease numbers of bodily qubits to implement the error correction in a totally scaled machine. In order that’s the true profit,” Painter instructed Reuters.
Painter mentioned that the present chip was constructed utilizing commonplace methods borrowed from the chip trade and a cloth known as tantalum, however that AWS and companions hope to customize these methods additional.
“That is the place I feel there’s going to be an enormous quantity of innovation and that would be the factor that might actually reel in timelines for growth. If we make enhancements on the supplies and processing stage, this may make the underlying know-how simply a lot easier,” Painter mentioned.
