To advance the capabilities of quantum computers, scientists need to make the delicate and incredibly power-demanding systems more stable, as well as scale up the processing power. In the next decade, IBM plans to address both of these issues, starting with its new Modular Cryogenic Systems, or “super refridgerators.”
Put together, two of these hefty fridge units measure more than 8 feet tall and 8 feet wide, large enough to host thousands of quantum chips stacked together like LEGOs.
To understand the technical requirements of quantum computing, you need to first understand what makes it different from standard computing. Classical computing relies on a binary of 1s and 0s. Quantum computing uses qubits (that is, quantum bits) instead, which are neither “on” nor “off” but somewhere in the middle. That simple but fundamental change results in an exponential increase in processing-power demand.
The cryogenic modules IBM just introduced keep qubits just a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, in the ultra-cold, isolated conditions that the qubits need to operate in—free from heat, vibrations, radiation, and other interference. The temperature in these boxes is more than 180 times colder than deep space. In fact, it’s so cold that the refrigeration units take around five days to reach the required temperature.
Read more: “They Probed Quantum Entanglement While Everyone Shrugged”
Also crucial to the tech are L-coupler superconductor cables that connect the qubits inside the modular system. These connectors can transmit quantum information between boxes without the qubits leaving the cryogenic environment and destroying its quantumness.
Later this year, the first working processor chip (containing hundreds of qubits) will be installed inside one of these fridges so that testing can begin. By next year, the plan is to have a larger computer made up of at least 1,000 programmable qubits. Then, before the end of the decade, IBM hopes to construct a system of 12 cryogenic fridges connected together, and 50 connected processor chips working in tandem.
That increasing volume of chips theoretically resolves another quantum-computing problem—having enough qubits working in tandem to correct for faults and inconsistencies, something that tends to happen with individual qubits even when they’re in an ultra-cold state.
With increased fault tolerance and fewer errors, the quantum computers of the future can run for extended periods of time without the stop-start-reset flow that currently plagues quantum experiments.
What’s the advantage to improving quantum computing?
In theory, quantum computers will be able to tackle the most difficult problems in science, including molecular chemistry (how biology works at the tiniest level), drug development and testing, and materials science—including developing the computer and network components of the future.
Yes, computers will take up whole rooms again, but it’s for a paradigm-shifting technological cause.
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Lead Image: IBM
