New quantum chip 'can be produced at scale in standard fab'
Oxford Ionics has demonstrated what it claims to be 'the highest performing quantum chip in the world'. It says the product can be built by most semiconductor fabrication plants.
The UK firm is a specialist in trapped ions tech. It says that this process is best suited to building a stable, high-performance quantum computer. However, until now, trapped ions have been difficult to scale as they are typically controlled by lasers.
Oxford Ionics claims it has now developed a way to eliminated the use of lasers with a technique that integrates everything needed to control trapped ions into a silicon chip. It says this technique has set industry records in both two-qubit gate and single-qubit gate performance (fidelity), without needing error correction.
The company will now build a scalable 256 qubit chip that can be manufactured on existing semiconductor production lines.
Dr Tom Harty, co-founder and CTO at Oxford Ionics, said in an official release: “When you build a quantum computer, performance is as important as size - increasing the number of qubits means nothing if they do not produce accurate results. We have now proven that our approach has delivered the highest level of performance in quantum computing to date, and is now at the level required to start unlocking the commercial impact of quantum computing. This is an incredibly exciting moment for our team, and for the positive impact that quantum computing will have on society at large.”
