Quantum Computing Advances: Closer to Millions of Qubits Chips

We’re one step closer to quantum chips with millions of qubits. This experiment is a success. To address symbolic problems, a quantum computer needs to have several million qubits. Physicists at the University of Basel have successfully developed a two-qubit logic gate in a silicon transistor. The prototypes of quantum computers developed by IBM, Google, Intel, or Honeywell, among other companies, have few qubits. Their complexity has been increasing over the past five years, but still, their qubits are not enough for us to stop considering them prototypes and start facing a truly significant range of problems. Their ability to correct their own errors is at stake.

This experiment draws a horizon where chips with millions of qubits appear. The search for the high scalability that will presumably make fully functional quantum computers possible can be addressed by resorting to very different strategies. One of them involves refining the manufacturing technology of silicon transistors currently used by integrated circuit manufacturers to produce a chip capable of aggregating many qubits. A group of researchers from the University of Basel, in Switzerland, has pursued this approach in an extraordinarily promising experiment. They have successfully developed a two-qubit logic gate inside a conventional silicon transistor. Their strategy…