However this work, which the corporate revealed final week in Nature, is only a first step towards that imaginative and prescient. Aurora used 35 chips to assemble a complete of 12 quantum bits, or qubits. Any helpful functions of quantum computing proposed up to now would require no less than hundreds of qubits, or probably one million. By comparability, Google’s quantum pc Willow, which debuted final yr, has 105 qubits (all constructed on a single chip), and IBM’s Condor has 1,121.
Devesh Tiwari, a quantum computing researcher at Northeastern College, describes Xanadu’s progress in an analogy with constructing a lodge. “They’ve constructed a room, and I’m positive they will construct a number of rooms,” he says. “However I don’t know if they will construct it ground by ground.”
Nonetheless, he says, the work is “very promising.”
Xanadu’s 12 qubits could look like a paltry quantity subsequent to IBM’s 1,121, however Tiwari says this doesn’t imply that quantum computer systems based mostly on photonics are working behind. In his opinion, the variety of qubits displays the quantity of funding greater than it does the expertise’s promise.
Photonic quantum computer systems supply a number of design benefits. The qubits are much less delicate to environmental noise, says Tiwari, which makes it simpler to get them to retain data for longer. It’s also comparatively easy to attach photonic quantum computer systems through typical fiber optics, as a result of they already use gentle to encode data. Networking quantum computer systems collectively is vital to the trade’s imaginative and prescient of a “quantum web” the place completely different quantum units speak to one another. Aurora’s servers additionally don’t should be saved as cool as superconducting quantum computer systems, says Weedbrook, in order that they don’t require as a lot cryogenic expertise. The server racks function at room temperature, though photon-counting detectors nonetheless should be cryogenically cooled in one other room.
Xanadu is just not the one firm pursuing photonic quantum computer systems; others embody PsiQuantum within the US and Quandela in France. Different teams are utilizing supplies like impartial atoms and ions to assemble their quantum methods.