Intel claims to have made a significant breakthrough in its efforts to manufacture silicon qubits using existing manufacturing processes, which they say could pave the way for large-scale production of quantum computers.
Intel labs and Intel component research institutions have demonstrated the throughput and standardization of “industry best” for silicon qubits, the chip giant says.
Intel’s Quantum Angle has been scaling up quantum processor chips using proprietary transistor manufacturing techniques tuned to mass production for decades.
The latest research was conducted using Intel’s second generation silicon spin-test chips that were developed at Intel’s Transistor Research and Development Facility, Gordon Moore Park, in Ronler Acre, Hillsboro, Oregon.
Intel claims to have achieved the “largest silicon electronic device in the industry” with a single electron placed at each position across a 300mm silicon wafer. According to the company, the chips that make up the chip show a high level of homogeneity, with a throughput rate of 95% across the chip.
James Clark Weaver of Intel
That would be possible when earlier this year Intel announced that the same manufacturing processes used to mass-produce processor chips could be used to produce silicon qubits for quantum logic gates, he said.
A prototype of the latest silicon spin apparatus was tested using a specially designed quantum freeze probe. This is an unusual cryogenic chamber in that it is large enough to fit the latest generation of dinner plate-size silicon chips and the equipment used to check them, all at 1.7 K (absolute zero). slightly higher). It is required to rotate qubits to maintain stability.
According to Intel, its cross-chip yield enables automation of cross-chip data collection in a single electronic system, making it the largest single and double quantum dot offering to date (over 900 single quantum dots). led to a single quantum dot and more than 400 double quantum dots). Dot, the company claimed.
The throughput and standardization improvements achieved over previous spin qubits will enable chip makers to use statistical process control techniques to identify areas of the manufacturing process that can be improved.
According to James Clark, director of quantum hardware at Intel, this is a step toward being able to scale up to the thousands or millions of qubits needed for commercial quantum computers.
“The high throughput and standardization achieved are strong indicators that manufacturing quantum chips on Intel’s established process node transistor is the right strategy for success as the technology matures toward commercialization.” In the future, we will continue to improve the quality of these devices and develop large-scale systems. These steps are the building blocks for us to move forward quickly.
Intel has previously explained that its vision is to create a quantum computing device that packs millions of individual qubits onto a single chip. This is to overcome the problem of reliability of quantum systems by using error-correction techniques that rely on the use of many physical qubits to represent a single logical qubit.
Hundreds or thousands of logical qubits would be needed to build systems with the complex magical capabilities promised into an ideal, fault-tolerant quantum computer. So companies like Intel are striving to get the millions of qubits they need.
Intel announced the full results of this research this week at the Silicon Quantum Electronics Workshop in Quebec, Canada. ®