Australian / German company Quantum Brilliance is developing powerful graphics card-sized quantum accelerators. 

These accelerators operate at room temperature and are better and cheaper than today’s massive quantum supercomputers capable of operating at low temperatures.

The company is testing and developing techniques for fabricating, scaling, and controlling qubits embedded in synthetic diamonds.

Interestingly, the company has announced that shortly, the dimensions of this processor will be small enough that it can use on mobile devices.

Today’s superconducting quantum computers are large machines that offer high throughput. These computers must eliminate any factor that causes the electron spin to be lost and the calculations to be distorted.

One solution involves mechanical separation in severely vacuum chambers, where only a few molecules remain in one or two cubic meters of space. Another approach involves electromagnetic fields; IBM, for example, surrounds its precious quantum bits or qubits with mu metals to absorb magnetic fields.

Another solution is temperature. Any atom with a temperature above absolute zero is in a state of vibration. Any temperature greater than 10 to 15 thousand degrees above absolute zero shakes the qubits to such an extent that they can not maintain alignment.

Therefore, most advanced quantum computers must be cryogenically or supercooled using sophisticated and expensive equipment to keep the qubits in place for a long time.

However, severe vacuums, hair metals, and ultra-cold cooling with microcavity temperatures are not solutions that can use in conjunction with cost-effective, portable, or scalable quantum computing. An Australian startup says it has built a quantum microprocessor that does not require any of these technologies and, in fact, works well at room temperature.

At the moment, this microprocessor is the size of a rack, but soon it will grow to the size of a graphics card, and shortly, it will grow to the size of a mobile device next to older processors.

If the company’s promises come true, it will be possible to bring the benefits of quantum computing to computers on the scale of today and to use the capabilities and processing power of this powerful supercomputer technology in desktop computers.

If quantum computing and related software enter the world of CPUs, we no longer need to send data to the cloud to process them, and it is possible to perform complex computations on users’ devices.

” Diamond Quantum Computers contain a set of processor nodes, ” says a Quantum Brilliance article. 

” Quantum computing is controlled by radio frequency, microwave, optical and magnetic fields.” each processor node consists of a nitrogen-depleted (NV) center (a hole in the diamond lattice consisting of an alternate nitrogen atom adjacent to a space) and a cluster of core spins. Nuclear spins act as computer qubits, while depleted nitrogen centers act as quantum passages that manage qubits’ initial quantification and retrieval process and multi-qubit intra- and inter-node operations.

Of course, such an approach is not new because it introduced the idea of ​​using room-temperature quantum quantities more than 20 years ago. Quantum Brilliance’s contribution in this field is to build these tiny components in an accurate and reproducible way, minimizing and integrating the control structures needed to receive information inside and outside the qubits.

“Diamond is a rigid material that has many unique properties that increase the stability of quantum phenomena,” says Mark Lowe, the company’s founder, and CEO. “This makes it possible to use new technology to interact with most classic control systems.”

“The core feature we’re using is a nuclear spin, not an electron spin,” said Mark Mattingley Scott, who oversees the company’s operations in Germany. For example, an atom is less sensitive to thermal vibrations than an electron, so that it can operate at room temperature. In the nitrogen-free space, there is a cavity through which we can interact with the qubits.

 “There are a lot of interactions, so we potentially get a few qubits in each space.”

The company has produced several quantum development kits in rack units, each of which has about five qubits. It provides these kits to partners and customers for testing, integration, and collaborative design opportunities so that companies can explore the issue. In 2025, these kits, which will be marketed as a 50 kb quantum accelerator, will help them in what areas.

“We’ve been working on this for over a decade, and we’ve got that capability so we can have a quantum system,” says Mark Lowe. Produce on a chip for mobile devices.

We at the Pawsey Supercomputing Center, currently the largest supercomputer center in the Southern Hemisphere and owned by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), have conducted extensive research on quantum computing.

We established Australia’s first supercomputer quantum innovation center and launched the Pawsey Pioneer program, in which industry and research teams can use our quantum operating system. We are deploying the world’s first room-temperature diamond quantum computing system at the Pawsey Center in the first quarter of 2022.

“It was supposed to be done sooner, but it was delayed due to Corona.”

How do these computing systems compare to traditional superconducting quantum computers? “The performance of the system is excellent,” says Mattingley Scott. Coherence mode in quantum mechanics A particular type of quantum model dynamics is almost similar to the oscillating behavior of a classical harmonic oscillator. Superconducting qubits typically maintain their coherence for 100 to 150 microseconds.

In-room isothermal diamonds, we are talking about milliseconds; For example, thousand times longer means you can do more. Qubits have an error rate, even before losing their coherence and descending to pure randomness. It is part of the equation, part of the error rate.

“You have more time to work with them.” the error rate we receive with nitrogen-depleted qubits is excellent. So, the initial answer is yes, these qubits are very powerful, and what you can do with these qubits is much more potent than what you can do with superconducting qubits because they can hold their own for longer.

When does one of these qubits reach the historical turning point of quantum superiority and become more powerful than any supercomputer in solving specific laboratory tests? “We have a five-year roadmap to produce what we call a quantum tool,” says Lou. Other systems can not downsize, but we can.

“So we want to produce a quantum computer or quantum accelerator with the same dimensions and weight as today’s computers to deliver the desired performance.”

Quantum Brilliance’s vision is to turn qubits into an extra string that can be easily integrated into any computer. Something like today’s advanced graphics cards that are mass-produced to run on a wide range of systems at a lower cost. Software developers can use traditional computing, which is practical and quantum computing, where it works well.

For example, the above calculations can be used in work involving the simulation of atomic or molecular structures. “can use The new hardware in drug development, battery development, complex spatial analysis, linear algebra, and matrix-style operations that underpin machine learning and artificial intelligence,” says Mattingley Scott.

A critical point to note about quantum computing is that the technology can perform complex computations with less energy than today’s systems, which reduces costs.

“The potential impact of quantum computing on business is that it will change almost everything we do and how we do it, ” says Mattingley Scott. I worked on quantum computing at IBM for 32 years. In the last five years, I have implemented the IBM Ambassador Program, essentially a pre-sales channel for technology for quantum computing.

I closely monitored what was being done about diamonds, knowing that if we could meet the need for refrigeration of quantum computers, the value we would offer our customers would double. So I followed the activities of Quantum Brilliance for a while and realized that no other company is working on a value proposition as much as this company.

 “That’s why I joined the company at the first opportunity.”

“Despite the five-year plan, we have a lot of ambiguities and unknown variables to achieve a quantum accelerator that is supposed to be the size of a graphics card, but we are not waiting for a magic technology.” 

There is no coma. We know how to make that device. We have to roll up our sleeves and do it. “I can not tell you the exact date, but we are moving in this direction.”

IBM unveils 127 QB quantum processor

In this regard, IBM recently introduced its new 127-bit quantum processor (Qubit) called Eagle to demonstrate its achievements in quantum hardware and software and the growth of the quantum ecosystem.

The Eagle processor is a significant breakthrough in the enormous computing capacity of devices based on quantum physics, promising a milestone in the development of hardware in which quantum circuits can reliably and accurately simulate a classical computer. IBM also demonstrated plans for the next generation of Quantum System Two quantum systems.

The central computational unit of quantum computing is the quantum circuit, the arrangement of the qubits in the quantum gates, and their measurements. The higher the number of qubits of a quantum processor, the more complex and valuable the quantum circuits become.

IBM has recently developed a detailed roadmap for quantum computing, including a way to scale quantum hardware that allows complex quantum circuits to reach Quantum Advantage, the point at which quantum systems can perform significantly better than systems. Eagle is the latest step in this scale.

Advances in quantum computing hardware can measure through the three characteristics of scale, quality, and speed. The scale is measured in terms of the number of qubits of a quantum processor and determines how well a quantum circuit can operate

. Quality is measured by Quantum Volume and describes precisely how quantum circuits work on an actual quantum device.

Speed ​​is measured via the CLOPS Circuit Layer Operations Per Second heading, A benchmark introduced by IBYM in November 2021, demonstrating the ability to perform real-time calculations.

127 qubit Eagle processor

Eagle is IBM’s first quantum processor with more than 100 operating and connected qubits. The processor was built after the 65-bit Hummingbird processors and IBM’s 27-bit Falcon processor, unveiled in 2019 and 2020, respectively.

To achieve this, IBYM researchers introduced innovations, including redesigning the qubits layout to reduce errors and the new architecture to reduce the number of unnecessary components in quantum processors.

The new techniques used in Eagle include control wiring at multiple physical levels in the processor while keeping the qubits on one layer to allow for a significant increase in qubits.

Increasing the number of qubits allows users to solve complex problems with a new and optimized approach. Experiments and implementation of scientific programs, optimization of algorithms, and training of machine learning models or modeling new molecules and materials used in the industry or drug discovery process become more accessible.

 Eagle is IBM’s first quantum processor that, because of its scale, is capable of performing simulations that are impossible for classical computers.

Ordinary computers need to have more processor bits than the 7.5 billion population of Earth to simulate 127 QB of CPU power.

“The advent of the Eagle processor is a big step towards the day when quantum computers can perform better than conventional computers for useful applications,” said Dr. Dario Gill, IBM Senior Vice President, and Research Director. Quantum computing has the power to revolutionize almost any industry, and it helps us tackle the most significant problems of our time.

“That’s why IBM is rapidly innovating in the design of quantum hardware and software and is looking for ways to create a global ecosystem that is essential to the growth of the quantum industry by empowering the quantum and classical workloads .”

IBM Quantum System Two

In 2019, IBM unveiled the IBM Quantum System One, the world’s first integrated quantum computing system. As IBM continues to scale its processors, they are expected to consider architectural design beyond the IBM Quantum System One infrastructure. Quantum System Two, a concept for the future of quantum computing systems, is designed to work with 433-qubit and 1121-qubit processors.

The IBM Quantum System Two design uses a new generation of scalable qubit control with higher density refrigeration components and special cabling. In addition, IBM Quantum System Two introduces a new cryptocurrency platform designed in conjunction with Bluefors that features an innovative structural design to maximize space to support the hardware required by larger processors while ensuring That engineers can easily access and maintain hardware.