Amazon Launches A Quantum Semiconductor Chip

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a potential breakthrough in quantum computing, a massive processing power technology, with the release of a prototype chip built on "cat qubit" technology, that takes the name from the famous "Schrödinger's cat" thought experiment.

Named Ocelot, the chip aims to deal with one of the major problems for quantum computer development -  to make them error free.

Now, Amazon researchers have published their findings in a research paper in the scientific journal Nature. 

While quantum computers are likely to be with us sooner than previously thought, but the questions about how powerful these machines will be is still being discussed. Quantum computers won't replace so-called "classical" computers, but promise to be able to solve problems even the most powerful modern computers cannot, yielding new discoveries such as better batteries and new medicines. But that potential is being held up by the problem of errors.

The algorithms required for quantum error correction have heavy-duty  hardware requirements. Furthermore,  Quantum computers are extremely sensitive to noise in their environment, vibrations, heat, electro-magnetic interference from mobile phones and WIFI networks, or even cosmic rays and radiation from outer space can all cause them to make errors, which then need to be corrected.

Cat qubits are one attempt at solving this problem by engineering error resistance into the design of the qubits it uses.

Qubits are the fundamental elements of quantum computers, the equivalent of bits in the computers most of us use today. Amazon believes the new chip offers a path to scaling up to more powerful machines with this type of error proofing built in, but researchers admit there are many challenges ahead.

Amazon's Ocelot chip is still a prototype, but the chip’s more efficient architecture could potentially allow for smaller quantum computers that use less resources.

Nature   |   Amazon   |    BBC   |    Reuters   |    MIT   |   The Verge  

Image: jiefeng jiang

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