The American company Rigetti Computing, specializing in quantum computers, has announced the Aspen-M, an 80-qubit quantum computer made up of two connected 40-qubit chips.
The Aspen-M, available in private beta, is the culmination of Rigetti’s particular approach to large-scale quantum computers. The company is looking to develop multichip quantum processors and earlier this year announced plans to offer them to customers through its Quantum Cloud Services platform.
Instead of scaling a single quantum processor, we link smaller chips together to create a modular processor with a larger number of qubits – the quantum version of the bits of classical computers, characterized by 1s and 0s, which can achieve an overlay where a bit can be both 1 and 0 or any combination of these states.
Rigetti also released a new 40-qubit single-chip processor-based Aspen system, which is typically available on Rigetti Quantum cloud services, Strangeworks, and Amazon Web Services’ Braket managed quantum computing service.
A third state with qubits: qutrits
Rigetti says Aspen superconducting processors deliver improvements in scale, speed and fidelity that enable quantum processing times 2.5 times faster than its existing systems, and reduce errors by up to 50% reading, thus improving the reliability of quantum program results.
“Our machines are now at a scale and speed that enables them to process the real-world data sets that underpin high-impact applications,” said Chad Rigetti, Founder and CEO of Rigetti Computing. “We believe these systems provide researchers and businesses with the best platform to pursue quantum advantage over real problems. “
In addition, Rigetti announced that it has added a third state to its qubits to create “qutrits” which allow more information to be encoded in a single element and to reduce read errors. The company currently offers experimental access to quit operations through its Quil-T service.
“Adding just one more state turns our qubits into qutrits, which not only increases the amount of information encoded in a single item, but also implements techniques that can dramatically reduce errors in reading, ”the company explains. “Access to the third state in our processors is useful for researchers exploring the cutting edge of quantum computing, quantum physics and those interested in traditional qubit-based algorithms,” she adds.
Explore quantum applications
Quantum computing heavyweights, including IBM, Microsoft and Google, have teamed up with consulting firms and players in the pharmaceutical industry, for example, to find new applications for quantum computing.
Microsoft recently partnered with consulting firm KPMG to work on several business applications. At the same time, Honeywell Quantum Solutions and Cambridge Quantum are combining their respective hardware and software to embark on quantum computing. IonQ, which hosts an 11-qubit trapped ion system on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, is partnering with Accenture to reach enterprises.
Rigetti announced that he is collaborating with Deloitte and Strangeworks to explore quantum applications in the simulation, optimization and machine learning of materials using new processors from Rigetti.
Source: ZDNet.com