Amazon unveils new ‘Ocelot’ quantum computing prototype chip after Google’s Willow and Microsoft’s Majorana 1
Amazon Web Services has unveiled ‘Ocelot’, its first prototype quantum computing chip on Thursday, February 28, with claims of reducing error correction costs by up to 90 per cent.
This comes right on the heels of Microsoft’s Majorana 1 quantum chip which was unveiled last week and Google’s Willow quantum chip which came last December.
Developed by the team at the AWS Center for Quantum Computing at the California Institute of Technology, Ocelot uses a special architecture which builds error correction into the whole system from the ground up, using what Amazon calls, the ‘cat qubit,’ according to its blog post.
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What is error correction and what is the cat qubit?
While a traditional computer runs on ‘bits’ (The binary 0 and 1 digits), quantum computers use what is known as quantum bits, or ‘qubits’ (Which can be both 1 and 0 at the same time).
These qubits are usually elementary particles such as electrons or photons which can be prone to errors due to them being highly sensitive to vibrations, heat, electromagnetic interference from cell phones and Wi-Fi networks.
Error correction refers to the process of rectifying these errors and making a quantum computer run properly and accurately.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s Cat qubits are named after the famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment.
This intrinsically suppress certain forms of errors, thereby reducing the resources required for quantum error correction.
“With the recent advancements in quantum research, it is no longer a matter of if, but when practical, fault-tolerant quantum computers will be available for real-world applications,” said Oskar Painter, AWS director of Quantum Hardware. “In the future, quantum chips built according to the Ocelot architecture could cost as little as one-fifth of current approaches, due to the drastically reduced number of resources required for error correction.”
“Concretely, we believe this will accelerate our timeline to a practical quantum computer by up to five years,” he added.
The potential future applications of quantum computing includes faster drug discovery and development, the production of new materials, the ability to make more accurate predictions about risk and investment strategies in financial markets, and many more.
Ocelot chip
The Ocelot chip consists of two integrated silicon microchips with an area of roughly one square centimeter each, bonded one on top of one another in an electrically-connected chip stack.
It has 14 core components: five data qubits (the cat qubits), five ‘buffer circuits’ for stabilizing the data qubits, and four additional qubits for detecting errors on the data qubits.
The cat qubits store the quantum states used for computation, for which it relies on components called oscillators, which generate a repetitive electrical signal along with steady timing.
Ocelot’s oscillators are made from a thin film of superconducting material called Tantalum with AWS material scientists having developed a specific way of processing the Tantalum to boost oscillator performance.
