February has been a hot month for quantum computing, the other week we had the unveiling of Microsoft's Majorana 1, which made breakthroughs in error resistance with topological qubits. Now, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced its own quantum computer chip, dubbed Ocelot. It uses something called cat qubits which also offer error resistance benefits.
What's notable about AWS' Ocelot, quantum computing chip is that it reduces the cost of implementing error correction by up to 90%. AWS has published its findings in a paper on Nature. By reducing costs, and publishing findings, this development is a step towards democratizing access to quantum computing.
“With the recent advancements in quantum research, it is no longer a matter of if, but when practical, fault-tolerant quantum computers will be available for real-world applications. Ocelot is an important step on that journey,” said Oskar Painter, AWS director of Quantum Hardware. “In the future, quantum chips built according to the Ocelot architecture could cost as little as one-fifth of current approaches, due to the drastically reduced number of resources required for error correction. Concretely, we believe this will accelerate our timeline to a practical quantum computer by up to five years.”
According to AWS, Ocelot contains 14 core components. There are five data qubits (cat qubits), five buffer circuits to stabilize the data qubits, and four more qubits for detecting errors on the data qubits. For anyone who wants to get further into the nitty-gritty details, Amazon has published a technical article about Ocelot.
Quantum computing is a pretty confusing topic, but within the next decade, we are going to be hearing much more about quantum computing breakthroughs, so it's a good idea to get a basic grasp on the topic. To this end, Neowin published an editorial explaining the basics of quantum computers and what they'll unlock.
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