PsiQuantum Unveils Manufacturable Chipset for Quantum Computing

In paper published in Nature, PsiQuantum has reported its development of a quantum photonic chipset purpose-built for utility-scale quantum computing. Called Omega, the chipset is designed and fabricated on full-size wafers at GlobalFoundries’ silicon photonics fab in N.Y. and contains all the advanced components required to build million-qubit-scale quantum computers, the company said.

Fabrication of the chips in a high-volume semiconductor fab, PsiQuantum said, represents a newly-reached level of technical maturity and scale in the field. The company said additionally that it plans to break ground this year on two datacenter-sized quantum compute centers, one each to be located in Brisbane, Australia and Chicago.

PsiQuantum has reported mass-manufacturable chips purpose-built for utility scale million-qubit quantum computers. The chips, described in a paper in Nature, are fabricated on full-size wafers. Courtesy of PsiQuantum.

The Nature paper shows high-fidelity qubit operations, and a simple, long-range chip-to-chip qubit interconnect — a key enabler to scale that has remained challenging for other technologies. The company also stated that it overcame challenges with background noise and low-temperature operation of the chip to demonstrate the circuit performance cited detailed in the paper, which cited measurements including 99.98% single-qubit state preparation and measurement fidelity, 99.5% two-photon quantum interference visibility, and 99.72% chip-to-chip quantum interconnect fidelity.

PsiQuantum also said that it has introduced a newly demonstrated cooling solution for quantum computers — eliminating the iconic “chandelier” dilution refrigerator in favor of a simpler, more powerful, and more manufacturable cuboid design, closer to a datacenter server rack. The Nature paper shares some details on this new approach to cooling, which is now deployed at PsiQuantum’s U.K. facility and was used for many of the performance results described, the company said.

PsiQuantum’s focus is now on wiring these chips together across racks, into increasingly large-scale multi-chip systems. The company said that it is now expanding this work through its partnership with the Department of Energy at Stanford’s Linear Accelerator in Palo Alto, Calif. as well as a new manufacturing and testing facility in Silicon Valley.