Researchers at Canadian Startup Nord Quartique say that a quantum computer that can surpass today’s fastest supercomputers may not need to be as big or power-hungry as we thought.
The company has built qubits with built-in error correction, eliminating the need for large clusters of physical qubits that are normally required for fault-resistant quantum computing.
Nord’s VolumeQuyque plans to scale this design to a 1,000 perspective machine by 2031. The system is compact enough to fit inside a data center and says it requires much less energy than current platforms.
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The announcement follows the 2024 milestone, and the company demonstrated a practical prototype of the “Bosonic Qubit.” This is a device that integrates quantum error correction directly into the hardware. In a statement, NORD representatives described the new architecture as “the first of applied physics” and a practical route to scalable utility-grade quantum machines. Breakthrough addresses long-standing challenges in quantum computing. This maintains the integrity of quantum information over time.
Quantum bits are extremely sensitive to heat, vibration, and electromagnetic interference, even when cooled close to absolute zero (–460°F, or –273°C). Most quantum platforms address this in order to prevent a single fault from scrubbing the entire calculation, as many physical qubits combine to form a single logical unit that can absorb and correct errors through redundancy.
Related: Quantum Computers can be found here, why do you need them?
However, creating a single logical kit traditionally requires dozens or hundreds of physical qubits, which significantly increases the size, complexity and energy costs of quantum computers. Nord’s volume system avoids this by using a single physical component to perform the role of a logical qubit.
Quantum computing in safe mode
At the heart of the design is a superconducting aluminum cavity known as a boson resonator, which is cooled to near absolute zero. This cavity contains photons (photons) that store quantum information in a particular electromagnetic pattern formed within the resonator. These patterns, known as “modes,” each represent a different way in which fields resonate within a cavity, allowing the same quantum state to be encoded in parallel.
By distributing information to multiple modes within the same physical structure, qubit can identify and correct certain types of interference. If one mode is destroyed, the other modes provide sufficient context to restore the correct state. This method, known as multimode encoding, provides each Qubit internal fault tolerance, reduces the need for external error correction, and enables a 1:1 ratio of physical and logical qubits.
Researchers estimated that 1,000 common kit machines built on this architecture occupy just 215 square feet (20 square meters) and consume only a small portion of the energy used in today’s high-performance systems.
They also calculated that a quantum computer built using the architecture could destroy an 830-bit RSA encryption key in an hour, consuming just 120 kilowatt-hour energy. In comparison, supercomputers need nine days and 280,000 kilowatt hours to solve the same problem, they said.
“The amount of physical qubits specialized in quantum error correction has always poses a major challenge for the industry,” said Julien Camirand Lemyre, CEO of Nord Quantique, in a statement. “Multimode encoding allows you to build a quantum computer with excellent error correction, but there is no fault of all these physical qubits.”
To make the system more vulnerable, researchers used a “boson code” called the Tesseract code. This helps prevent common quantum faults such as bit flips, phase flips, control errors, and leaks. Here, Qubit slips into a state that is not part of a system that is not used to store and process information. Most error correction techniques only work within the set of expected quantum states and are difficult to fix leaks as they cannot be found when something falls outwards.
To test the reliability of the system, researchers performed repeated rounds of error correction, excluding results that did not work as intended.
Approximately 12.6% of the runs were ruled out, they said. The remaining data suggests that Qubit retains its state through 32 rounds of error correction without measurable attenuation, suggesting that multimode encoding can reliably store quantum information under stable conditions.
Nord Qualique plans to release a 100-inch kit machine by 2029, with 1,000 complete systems scheduled for 2031. “It makes them particularly attractive [high-performance computing] HPC Centers are the centers with the highest energy costs. ”
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