Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Thursday, February 27, demonstrated a quantum computing chip with new technology, which the company expects will reduce by as much as five years its efforts to build a commercially useful quantum computer.
The mentioned chip was named Ocelot. It is worth noting that the product demonstrated on Thursday is only a prototype, having a small fraction of the computing power needed to develop a useful machine. Like its competitors, AWS, which is Amazon.com ’s cloud computing unit, believes that it has finally managed to hit a technology that can be scaled to a working machine, although it has not yet decided the date when this will happen.
The area of quantum computing contains significant prospects, which so far continue to be what can be called a resource that humanity has to develop. The specified area should have its own so-called ChatGPT moment. The mentioned chatbot from OpenAI, which debuted in 2022, demonstrated the specific practical benefits of artificial intelligence, which had previously been a topic discussed mainly by scientists. AI was a kind of abstract idea. ChatGPT has demonstrated impressive abilities related to processing huge amounts of information and generating original content based on user prompts. After the debut of this chatbot, the so-called artificial intelligence boom began, which continues to this day and is actually the main technological trend of modernity. The mass consumer saw an unambiguous example of the practical value of machine intelligence. Quantum computing will become a large-scale technology after a product that generates concrete and significant benefits in terms of practical use results is also introduced in this area. It is still unknown when exactly this will happen. A certain technological breakthrough in the near future has the same degree of probability as a similar event in a more distant chronological perspective.
It is worth noting that recently there has been an increase in attention to quantum computing. In this case, it primarily refers to the efforts of technology giants and startups in an appropriate functional environment. In recent months, Google, Microsoft, and the startup PsiQuantum have announced advances in the mentioned area. The chip from AWS continues the corresponding tendency.
Experts in the area of technology claim that quantum computers will be able to quickly carry out computations that would take conventional computers several million of years. It is also claimed that the mentioned machines can help scientists develop new materials. In the relevant context, new drugs and batteries are primarily meant. The fundamental building block of quantum computers, which is the qubit, is fast, but at the same time, it is characterized by significant error propensity and fastidiousness.
In the 1990s, scientists established that some quantum computer qubits could be dedicated to correct the mentioned errors. Since then, years have been spent searching for ways to construct physical qubits so that there are enough logical qubits left to do useful computational work.
Industry-standard thinking stipulates that a chip needs about a million physical qubits to yield a useful number of logical qubits.
AWS claims that it has developed a microcircuit prototype that uses just nine physical qubits to yield one working logical qubit. The company said it used a so-called cat qubit, named after the famous thought experiment by physicist Erwin Schrodinger, in which an unlucky cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time.
Oskar Painter, AWS director of quantum hardware, said the company’s approach could one day yield useful computers containing as few as 100,000 qubits, rather than a million. According to him, this should allow the firm to provide five to ten times fewer physical qubits to implement error correction in a fully scaled machine. It was also noted that this is where the real benefits lie. AWS says that its chip’s design could reduce costs associated with error correction by as much as 90%.
Oskar Painter stated that the current chip was constructed using standard techniques borrowed from manufacturers of microcircuits and a material called tantalum. It was also noted that AWS and its partners hope to further customize these techniques. Oskar Painter suggests that there is going to be a huge amount of innovation here, and this will be something that can really reel in timelines for development. It was also noted that if AWS makes improvements at the materials and processing levels, it significantly simplifies the underlying technology.
As we have reported earlier, AWS to End Support for Amazon Chime.
