UNSW unveils a complete quantum computer chip design
University of New South Wales' ( UNSW ) team of engineers unveiled their design of a working chip that can integrate quantum interactions. According to UNSW, the design, which can be manufactured using mostly standard industry processes and components, comprises a "novel architecture" that allows quantum calculations to be performed using existing CMOS components. Quantum computing may be the next giant leap in technology but the designing a quantum computer on a single chip was been elusive until now. Also another dramatic change that comes from this release is that quantum computers can be made using existing semiconductor manufacturing plants.
The design was published in the journal Nature Communications by Andrew Dzurak, director of the Australian National Fabrication Facility at UNSW and Dr Meno Veldhorst, who is the lead author of the paper and a research fellow at UNSW. The design incorporates conventional silicon transistor switches to turn on operations between qubits in a vast two dimensional array, using grid based "word" and "bit" select protocol similar to that used on select bits in a conventional compute memory chip. Veldhorst adds "By selecting electrodes above a qubit, we can control a qubit's spin, which store the quantum binary code of a 0 or a 1. And by selecting electrodes between the qubits, two-qubit logic interactions or calculations can be performed between qubits." The design employs error correcting codes that use multiple qubits to store a single piece of data.
Dzurak was instrumental in building a quantum logic gate in silicon which made the calculations between two qubits of information possible. At the time, it was not possible to make two quantum bits "talk" to each other and create a logic gate using silicon. What the announcement means is that all the fundamental building blocks required to make a full scale quantum chip are now available and that we are out of the research phase and can move into the engineering and manufacturing stage. This announcement may revolutionize the world.