The Classical Advances Needed to Make Quantum Computers Tick
Quantum computers promise to solve problems beyond the most powerful supercomputers, but operating them takes a large amount of classical computing. As qubit counts rise, the classical hardware and software that support calibration and error correction must scale alongside them. Companies including Nvidia, Q-CTRL, IBM Quantum, Riverlane, and Google Quantum AI are building tools to accelerate these classical tasks.
Key Takeaways
- Quantum computers promise to one day solve problems beyond the most powerful supercomputers imaginable.
But it's often underappreciated how much classical computing it takes just to operate these machines.
- The Role of Classical in Quantum Digital computer chips are marvels of engineering, operating flawlessly out of the box and capable of trillions of operations without error.
The quantum bits, or qubits, at the heart of a quantum computer, by contrast, are temperamental and unreliable, requiring regular calibration and complex error-correcting schemes to keep them on track.
- Therefore, I expect that every practical and efficient quantum-computer architecture will incorporate fast classical devices."
Tuning Quantum Hardware While the transistor has cemented its place as the foundational component of classical chips, the qubits at the heart of a quantum computer come in many flavors-superconducting circuits, trapped ions , neutral atoms , even individual photons .
- This isn't a scalable solution and so there's a growing drive to automate the process.
This is challenging because every step relies on results from the previous step.
- Q-CTRL's software performs "runtime recalibration" to nudge things back into place, but there's a limit to how much on-the-fly adjustment is practical.
Quantum computers promise to one day solve problems beyond the most powerful supercomputers imaginable. But it's often underappreciated how much classical computing it takes just to operate these machines. As qubit counts rise, innovations in this supporting infrastructure will be essential if they're to live up to their promise.
To prepare for the scale of quantum computers the industry is working toward, many companies are also gearing up the classical hardware, and software, required to support them. In April, Nvidia announced new AI-based software to accelerate the classical tasks that enable quantum computers. Sydney-based quantum software company Q-CTRL has developed an automatic calibration algorithm for quantum computers, and is now leveraging Nvidia's agent-based system.
Other companies, including IBM Quantum , Cambridge, England-based Riverlane , which develops quantum-error correction, and Google Quantum AI , are developing similar tools. The Role of Classical in Quantum Digital computer chips are marvels of engineering, operating flawlessly out of the box and capable of trillions of operations without error. The quantum bits, or qubits, at the heart of a quantum computer, by contrast, are temperamental and unreliable, requiring regular calibration and complex error-correcting schemes to keep them on track.
For more details please read the original article at IEEE Spectrum AI.
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