Rotonium's Fortress of Photonic Solitude
Truth, Justice, and the Photonic Quantum Computing Way
For the record, The Quantum Dragon’s Superman wears his underwear on the outside. I asked for Christopher Reeve, but Copilot apparently trained on Henry Cavill. #sigh
Superman’s Fortress of Solitude needs no introduction. That said, there’s one aspect of it you might be missing. The knowledge crystals aren’t just the advanced Kryptonian hard drives they are often depicted as. Astute observers note that Superman verbally interacts with them. That’s right; they’re computers.
I recently spoke with Rotonium for an upcoming IQT Research report, and CEO Roberto Siagri told me something that was destined to become an IQT News Exclusive: the inspiration for Rotonium’s technology came four decades ago from Superman’s Fortress of Solitude and from watching Superman perform computation with crystals. As I think about it, there are some obvious parallels.
Living on the Edge
Superman’s Fortress of Solitude is actually way past the edge of human civilization. Neighbors don’t exactly stop by to borrow proverbial cups of sugar, you know what I mean? Although Rotonium isn’t quite as extreme, it is appropriately focused on the “edge,” technologically speaking. In fact, the term in use is “photonic edge computing.”
Minimizing SWaP
Baby Kal-El carried his fortress with him from Krypton in his little spaceship. One crystal built the whole thing for him; if you’re a little fuzzy on that, feel free to go back and watch the 1978 movie again. Similarly, as “edge computing” implies, Rotonium is focused on reducing size, weight, and power. One way that is accomplished is by encoding multiple qubits per photon.
Different-Sized Crystals
You may have noticed that Superman’s knowledge crystals are not uniformly sized. They store different volumes of information, serve different functions, and might represent the aspect of knowledge contained. Coincidentally, Rotonium plans to offer QPUs in a variety of form factors, including chips, boards, and boxes.
Kryptonian Technology
Okay, okay, Rotonium’s roadmap doesn’t go quite that far. But the roadmap is comparable to others out there in the sense that the goal is 64-100 logical qubits by 2030. One major difference, however, is that this will be accomplished with fewer than a dozen photons. The QPUs will also be connectable via fiber.
Conclusion
Superman is buddy buddy with Wonder Woman, and her Lasso of Truth is compelling me to admit that I left a lot out. Most of Rotonium’s profile does not add to the Fortress of Solitude analogy, which is the focus of this article. Rest assured that this information and much, much more will be published in the not-too-distant future.
Speaking of IQT Research reports, by the way, check out these hot ones:
Image generated by an AI model provided by Microsoft Copilot.