Solving a Looming Supply Chain Problem
The Significance of the EUR 2.35 Million Investment in Arctic Instruments
The COVID-19 pandemic shifted consumer demand from services to goods. In the United States, increased demand for imported goods congested the Port of Los Angeles, as shown above, which led to disruptions in trucking, as well as to a global shortage of containers, which had a cascading effect on global supply chains. Consumers faced delayed deliveries and increased costs, while businesses faced disrupted manufacturing and other operational challenges.
Do you remember the pain?
Arctic Instruments, a spinout of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, recently announced that it raised EUR 2.35 million to develop next-generation amplifiers, and it was hard to get excited about it until it was framed in exactly this context. These microwave near-quantum-limited amplifiers are critical components of superconducting quantum computers, and although there haven’t been any supply chain problems during the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) era, we don’t currently have the consistent-quality, reliable-volume manufacturing to scale up. Large-scale devices were about to have a supply chain problem reminiscent of the Port of Los Angeles.
And that’s where the funding announcement becomes interesting. Arctic Instruments will use it to become the first industrial-level supplier of these amplifiers, reliably delivering both quantity and quality. The company already claims superior maturity compared to competitors’ components.
Why are these amplifiers “critical” components?
You might be wondering why these amplifiers are such as big deal. They have three main effects on superconducting quantum computers:
They improve the fidelity of qubit readout, aka “readout fidelity.” In other words, imagine that our quantum computer implemented error correction and the computation had an extremely low error rate, but then measuring the qubits introduced errors. What’s worse is that the mid-circuit measurements introduced errors, and the computation wasn’t error-corrected after all. For quantum error correction (QEC) to work, readout fidelity must improve.
They emit little coherence-reducing noise back toward the qubits. In other words, imagine taking mid-circuit measurements and it’s not just the measurements that are in error, but we’re introducing new errors on the qubits. By not doing that, a pre-commercial prototype of the amplifier contributed to a demonstration of record Transmon coherence times in a university laboratory.
The modules can be packed closely together, and this physical compactness facilitates scaling. Currently, the space required for 20 amplifiers (their packages and auxiliary components) for just 100 qubits greatly exceeds the space consumed by the chip. Therefore, saving space within cryogenic systems, because miniaturization is important, should start with these readout components.
Conclusion
Superconducting quantum computers with 100 physical qubits currently need 10-20 of these amplifiers to perform measurements. To scale up to just 10,000 physical qubits, far short of what is needed, would require thousands of these amplifiers at a consistent quality. Multiply this by the growing number of players in the ecosystem, the continued growth we would expect to see beyond 10,000 qubits, as well as an explosion in demand once error-corrected quantum computers of this size become available, and the notion of a supply chain problem ought not need convincing. Anyone who is building, investing in, or considering using superconducting quantum computers ought to be excited by this announcement.
The funding round was led by Lifeline Ventures, one of the largest venture capital funds in Finland.
Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2021