Xanadu announces scalable, networked and modular quantum computer
The company says its universal photonic quantum computer is a world first and marks a pivotal milestone towards realising utility-scale quantum computing
Xanadu says it has achieved a world first in the quantum computing industry by successfully building a universal photonic quantum computer consisting of four modular and independent server racks that are photonically interconnected and networked together. This 12-qubit machine, known as Aurora, consists of 35 photonic chips and a combined 13 km of fibre optics all operating at room temperature.
With this breakthrough, which has been published in Nature, the company says Aurora could in principle be scaled up to thousands of server racks and millions of qubits today, realising the ultimate goal of a quantum datacentre.
“The two big challenges remaining for the industry are the improved performance of the quantum computer (error correction and fault tolerance) and scalability (networking). Xanadu has now solved scalability,” says Christian Weedbrook, the founder and CEO of Xanadu. “Photonics really is the best and most natural way to both compute and network. We now could, in principle, scale up to thousands of server racks and millions of qubits, but first we will focus on performance in reducing loss and being fault tolerant.”
According to Xanadu, technologies central to its earlier X8 and Borealis systems, both also published in Nature, are leveraged and built into Aurora, demonstrating the effectiveness of a dedicated modular approach. The company says this union of modular components shows that the main ingredients for an error-corrected, universal photonic quantum computer are present. Furthermore, Xanadu’s architecture and the use of robust qubit states show that key quantum computational processes such as quantum gate operations, real-time error correction, and decoding are possible within the stringent limitations set by quantum clock rates and classical hardware control, the company adds.
Xanadu says that this development provides a realistic path to scaling up by orders of magnitude, led by straightforward networking of an indefinite number of modules, which are necessary for large-scale implementations. The company also says that the use of commercially available chips made through mature fabrication techniques, and significantly lower cooling requirements makes Aurora an attractive choice for the future of quantum computing.
The Xanadu team say they are now aiming to tackle the next major hurdle towards fault-tolerant quantum computing: optical loss. The published results of Aurora quantified precise optical loss tolerances within the completed photonic architecture and identified that the biggest impact will be found in optimising chip design and fabrication alongside Xanadu’s foundry partners.
