Amazon is making its foray into quantum computing with the launch of a brand new chip designed to make quantum error correction extra environment friendly. In an announcement on Thursday, Amazon Net Providers (AWS) stated the chip, known as Ocelot, can “cut back the prices of implementing quantum error correction by as much as 90%, in comparison with present approaches.”
Quantum computing errors are one of many greatest challenges within the business. Not like conventional computer systems, quantum computing replaces binary 1s and 0s with qubits, a unit that may exist in a number of states on the identical time. As famous by Amazon, qubits are “delicate to the smallest adjustments, or ‘noise’ of their atmosphere,” reminiscent of vibrations, warmth, and electromagnetic interference, making it “extraordinarily difficult to construct quantum computer systems that may carry out dependable, error-free calculations of any important complexity.”
As an alternative of including extra qubits to right these errors, Amazon constructed error correction into its Ocelot chip with what it calls “cat qubits” (named after the Schrödinger’s cat experiment). These qubits are supposed to scale back the quantity of vitality and assets used for quantum error correction as they “intrinsically suppress” sure sorts of errors.
“We didn’t take an current structure after which attempt to incorporate error correction afterwards,” Oskar Painter, Amazon Net Providers’ director of quantum {hardware}, stated within the press launch. “We chosen our qubit and structure with quantum error correction as the highest requirement.”
The method differs from what Google and Microsoft are doing to scale back errors in quantum computing. In December, Google introduced its Willow quantum computing chip, which might carry out a computing problem in lower than 5 minutes. The corporate’s researchers additionally discovered that introducing extra qubits into the system can assist cut back errors. In the meantime, Microsoft lately introduced its Majorana 1 quantum computing processor, which it claims can “scale to 1,000,000 qubits on a single chip” whereas decreasing errors.
Amazon says its Ocelot chip continues to be a prototype, however the chip’s extra environment friendly structure might doubtlessly permit for smaller quantum computer systems that use much less assets.
