In Grenoble, the French “little Silicon Valley”, science and technology coexist. On Tuesday 29 November, the quantum start-up Siquance was officially launched at the CEA premises. Born from the merger between the research work of the CEA and the CNRS around quantum technology and microelectronics, Siquance intends to exploit the capacities of semiconductor producers to build a silicon-based quantum computer.
Failing to be the first French start-up to venture into the manufacture of a quantum computer, Siquance wants to be the one that will manage to industrialize its technology as quickly as possible, using the same technologies as those of standard integrated circuits.
Even if the technology exists, it must be understood that quantum computers are still far from being commercialized on the market. We are talking about a “10-year horizon”, specifies Maud Vinet, CEO of Siquance, itself from the CEA.
From lab to factory
The main technological breakthrough is based on the transformation of a transistor, the basic unit of classical calculation, into a quantum bit. Assembled, these quantum bits will form a new type of ultra-powerful computer.
Siquance management estimates that a minimum of 100,000 physical qubits would be needed to form a quantum computer. This is the basis for hoping to achieve solid results without too many calculation errors. But at this stage, no quantum technology can claim perfect results. The phenomenon of decoherence indeed gives rise to high error rates, which require the creation of advanced correction algorithms in parallel.
If we are still sailing in science fiction, the hopes around the quantum are no less great. However, the quantum ecosystem has been experiencing a certain effervescence in France for a few years, with a scientific community very active in this field, and supported by the government’s 2021 quantum plan.
Pasqal, Alice & Bob or Qubit Pharmaceuticals, to name just these French start-ups, took the starting line. They exploit different technologies, such as trapped ions, superconductors or photonics, but none has so far taken a really significant head start, explains Maud Vinet.
Siquance still has every chance. Its three founders want to take advantage of the start-up’s proximity to the academic world to feed on state-of-the-art R&D from the CNRS and the CEA. The Siquance team also benefits from privileged access to the CEA’s clean rooms to test chips, and to the cutting-edge measuring instruments needed to explore the quantum field, such as cryogenic devices to carry out the first tests on qubits. at very low temperature.
A “sovereign” ecosystem
The CEO of Siquance uses the words “fabless” and agile to define the Siquance project. The start-up intends to rely on the local industrial pool to produce its future machines. It will need to work closely with founders, STMicroelectronics or Soitec in the lead, to manufacture chips in series. The team will also need to equip itself with high-performance cryogenic machines for the mandatory step of cooling the quantum components.
The important thing will also be to acculturate the first industrial customers, to create use cases based on concrete problems.
Siquance will eventually be able to serve the computing market more globally, with cloud access providers, shared computing centers and end customers directly.
“Thanks to the industrial sector of semi-conductors and quantum computing which makes it possible to address all areas of industry, Siquance wishes to establish itself quickly and to deploy on a global market which ultimately aims to create a value of several hundreds of billions of euros for all of these areas,” emphasizes Maud Vinet.