These so-called two-qubit logic gates are fundamental building blocks of quantum computers, and demonstrating their high fidelity in an industrial environment marks a significant milestone.
Quantum computers promise to solve problems far beyond the capabilities of today’s most powerful supercomputers, yet practical implementation has long remained elusive, Knowridge reports.
Now, a breakthrough by Sydney-based company Diraq, a spin-out from the University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), may pave the way for building large-scale, cost-effective quantum systems.
Diraq specializes in silicon-based quantum chips—devices that perform computations using the principles of quantum mechanics. Until now, such chips had only shown high performance under tightly controlled laboratory conditions. The critical question for the industry has been whether this performance can be replicated in large-scale commercial production.
That question has now been answered. In collaboration with imec, a leading semiconductor research center based in Belgium, Diraq has demonstrated that its quantum chips can achieve the 99% fidelity required for reliable quantum operations, even when manufactured outside the lab.
“This is a key step forward,” said Professor Andrew Dzurak, engineer at UNSW, founder and CEO of Diraq. “For the first time, we’ve shown that the fidelity of our quantum processors can be reproduced in a commercial semiconductor foundry. It means our chips are fully compatible with standard industrial processes.”
The findings, published in Nature, focus on operations involving two quantum bits (qubits). These so-called two-qubit logic gates are fundamental building blocks of quantum computers, and demonstrating their high fidelity in an industrial environment marks a significant milestone.
The achievement aligns with the goals of the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, a program under the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) aimed at determining when quantum computers will reach “utility scale”—the point at which their commercial value exceeds their maintenance costs.
To reach that threshold, quantum processors must manage and correct errors across millions of qubits. Silicon is emerging as the leading candidate to meet this challenge. Unlike other, more exotic materials, silicon can integrate millions of qubits on a single chip and is already the foundation of the global microchip industry, making it far easier—and cheaper—to scale.
Diraq had previously demonstrated that single-qubit operations could achieve 99.9% accuracy using standard CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) technology—the same widely used in conventional computer chips. Until now, however, achieving the same accuracy for two-qubit operations in industrial conditions had remained out of reach.
The new results change that. “With this milestone, we’ve opened the door to building a fully reliable, functional quantum computer that is more cost-effective than any other platform,” Dzurak stated.
By proving that high-fidelity quantum chips can be mass-produced, Diraq and its partners may have taken the most crucial step yet toward making quantum computers a reality. |BGNES