Public Funding for Quantum Motion Technologies Limited

Optimization problems appear in many areas of industry including scheduling problems in transportation, improvement of manufacturing lines or within finance strategies. Solving these optimization problems can be a demanding but important task, having the possibility to solve hard optimization problems is a key factor for economic and strategic success. As conventional computer systems are limited in their capability to solve such problems, studying alternative approaches is crucial. Quantum computers follow an unconventional computing paradigm, where problems are solved based on the control and manipulation of quantum systems, so called quantum bits. In order to solve such a problem with a quantum computer, the description of the problem has to be rendered to a formulation which can be represented by the quantum computer. The approach of ParityQC, an Austrian quantum architecture company, enables the mapping of hard problems even to sparsely connected networks of quantum bits. Quantum Motion develops silicon quantum processors, enabling the demonstration of quantum algorithms. Applying the ParityQC architecture to the quantum processors of Quantum Motion leads to a versatile tool to demonstrate and study the potential to solve optimization problems on near-term quantum technologies.

Optimization problems appear in many areas of industry including scheduling problems in transportation, improvement of manufacturing lines or within finance strategies. Solving these optimization problems can be a demanding but important task, having the possibility to solve hard optimization problems is a key factor for economic and strategic success. As conventional computer systems are limited in their capability to solve such problems, studying alternative approaches is crucial. Quantum computers follow an unconventional computing paradigm, where problems are solved based on the control and manipulation of quantum systems, so called quantum bits. In order to solve such a problem with a quantum computer, the description of the problem has to be rendered to a formulation which can be represented by the quantum computer. The approach of ParityQC, an Austrian quantum architecture company, enables the mapping of hard problems even to sparsely connected networks of quantum bits. Quantum Motion develops silicon quantum processors, enabling the demonstration of quantum algorithms. Applying the ParityQC architecture to the quantum processors of Quantum Motion leads to a versatile tool to demonstrate and study the potential to solve optimization problems on near-term quantum technologies.

In this project, we will produce that tool: An electronic company aided design (ECAD) software module for the microscopic modelling and simulation of qubit devices. The tool will have the predictive power to determine the impact of device design parameters on qubit performance. Furthermore, the development of the module will be made completely compatible with industry-standard circuit simulation tools such as it can be easily integrated with existing simulation environments reducing the cost of adoption. This development will echo the development of CAD tools used conventional semiconductor industry, which have resulted in reductions in development time of up to 75% for new devices and are the building block of the CMOS industry.

In this project, we will produce that tool: An electronic company aided design (ECAD) software module for the microscopic modelling and simulation of qubit devices. The tool will have the predictive power to determine the impact of device design parameters on qubit performance. Furthermore, the development of the module will be made completely compatible with industry-standard circuit simulation tools such as it can be easily integrated with existing simulation environments reducing the cost of adoption. This development will echo the development of CAD tools used conventional semiconductor industry, which have resulted in reductions in development time of up to 75% for new devices and are the building block of the CMOS industry.

The Altnaharra project brings together leading researchers in superconducting, ion trap and spin qubits along with a world-leading cryogenic equipment supplier and world-leading centre for measurement standards to develop a cryogenic chip for integrated qubit control and readout, manufactured in a standard CMOS foundry. The development of such a chip is a fundamental enabler for the whole quantum computing community and a requirement for creating a quantum processor not limited by IO wires and therefore able to scale sufficiently to solve meaningful problems.

A remote environment for the testing and development of integrated circuits for business continuity in the event of government requirements to work from home.

Quantum computing is poised to be a driver of innovation in the next decade. Its information processing capabilities will radically accelerate drug discovery, improve online security, and will boost artificial intelligence algorithms. Building a quantum computer promises to have a major positive impact on society. However, current qubit numbers are insufficient to realise quantum computation of significant practical use. For instance, simulations of simple materials require hundreds or thousands of qubits, while for the most economically and socially significant algorithms many millions or billions will be required. An industry manufacturable technology that can achieve that level of integration is required to move from the $1.1 B market of small-scale quantum processors to the projected $130 B for large-scale quantum computers. Quantum Motion is tackling the challenge by building qubits using silicon transistors, the technology capable of integrating more elements in a single chip than people on the surface of Earth. Silicon spin qubits embedded in silicon transistors have great scalability prospects since they can leverage the technology underpinning today's semiconductor industry. However, qubits are not exactly transistors and small modifications are needed to exploit the quantum nature of these devices. For example, the readout circuitry currently used to read the quantum state of a silicon spin qubit is orders of magnitude larger than the transistors themselves posing a bottleneck for scaling. Project QuPix enters at the core of this idea and focuses on developing an integrated and industry manufacturable qubit cell, including the circuitry surrounding the qubit dedicated to the readout, with an unparalleled small footprint, a million times smaller than the most scalable alternative quantum hardware. Our scalable approach is designed to have a qubit cell density of 10^8 cm^-2, offering a platform to cram on a chip the size of a fingerprint the qubit numbers needed to tackle society's most demanding computational problems placing the UK at the forefront of an industrial race to realise an integrated silicon-based quantum computer. In the path to scaling, the QuPix cells can offer technological applications today. In the same way that the first transistors were used for amplification purposes until digital computing got traction, we will use a single QuPix to demonstrate a new kind of quantum-limited amplifier: a silicon-based an amplifier adding the minimal noise allowed by the laws of quantum mechanics capable of entering the market due to its cost-effective industrial manufacturability, compactness, and resilience against magnetic fields.

Quantum computers represent harnessing nature at its deepest level to build the most capable computing machines we can imagine based on the laws of physics we know today. They have been predicted to transform areas ranging from logistics, to the discovery of materials and drugs, and security. The most profound impacts of quantum computing will require the full correction of errors in the calculation, and this capability is expected to require up to millions of quantum bits, or 'qubits', all connected by quantum links. However, there is mounting evidence that even relatively small-scale quantum processors, without error correction, will be capable of solving useful problems and offering disruptive advances. For example, a quantum computer with just 53 elementary quantum bits (and no error correction) has recently beaten the world's most powerful supercomputer in a competition to solve a computation problem. However, the computation problem chosen was a contrived one of no practical value, designed to favour the quantum computer, and it remains an open and important challenge to use such small-scale quantum processors to solve useful problems and achieve what some have termed 'quantum advantage'. One way to enhance the power of small-scale quantum processors is to operate them in parallel -- essentially taking many copies of the quantum processor and giving them related tasks to solve. In practice, this 'multi-core' approach can offer substantial speed-ups for quantum algorithms design for modelling materials and drugs. However, implicit in this approach is a low 'cost per qubit', which allows the manufacture of many independent quantum processors, and the ability to interface the quantum processors to a conventional computer for control. Silicon offers a platform for quantum computing which is ideally suited to this approach, being able to leverage CMOS technology to produce qubits, as well as the conventional electronics to connect the quantum processors to the required controller. In this feasibility project, we will further develop the multi-core quantum processor concept in silicon, both experimentally and theoretically, to establish how it can be realised using CMOS technology and what its predicted capabilities will be and what new problems it will be able to solve.

QDevil and Quantum Motion aim to assist Quantum Computing researchers to improve the outcome of their work by providing them a complete solution that will help them to run their experiments at cryogenic temperatures faster and more accuratelly. We have designed a unique and ground-breaking solution that will save them up to 84% of the time expent experimenting and save them thousands of pounds a year in non-reusable equipment. We will provide them a set of components that do not need custom made elements and can test up to 5 different experiments at the same time. This features are not being offered by no other company, as most Quantum Computing research teams still have staff working on the preparation of the auxiliary equipment for the experiments, which are tested one at a time. By combining the know-how of both companies, we will deliver a unique solution that will revolutionize the development of QC researchers, closing the gap between current experiments and commercial quantum computers. We will empower QC researchers to make commercial quantum processors a reality, unleashing its full power for the benefit of the society, such as the discovery of new chemicals, materials and drugs.