January 29, 2024 -- QuantrolOx’s Quantum EDGE qubit automation software has set a new benchmark for speed and ease of use for qubit bring up, characterisation, and testing (characterisation for short) with over 100x speed up compared to current industry benchmarks, thereby removing a major bottleneck in the rate of development of quantum processing units (QPUs) and accelerating the path to developing practical quantum computers.

The slowness of bringing up qubits, characterising, and testing them has substantially hampered the development of quantum processing units (QPUs). For QPUs with just tens of qubits, the process is known to take anywhere from several weeks to a few months, resulting in ponderous iterative development. Even after 25 years since the invention of the first solid-state qubit in 1999, we are still struggling in the 100 qubit era.

The difficulty in the characterisation process arises due to variations in the fabrication process and inherent defects in the material, resulting in qubits that vary significantly across a quantum processing unit (QPU). This means that no two qubits are the same and devices vary significantly in their behaviour: Each qubit in a QPU has to be painstakingly characterised and tested using tools that require significant manual operations by quantum experts.

Using QuantrolOx’s proprietary AI-engine, Quantum EDGE learns the variability of each qubit and decides the appropriate microwave pulse sequences to ensure automated qubit bring-up, characterisation, and testing with just a press of a button. Quantum EDGE has been designed to seamlessly integrate the workflow of the QPU development and production processes.

The benefit of Quantum EDGE over current solutions is demonstrated through two case studies:

Case Study 1: Speed up qubit device bring-up, characterisation, and testing: With current tools, the industry norm is 1-2 days to bring up, characterise, and test a single qubit, with a need for frequent manual intervention in the process. QuantrolOx showed that Quantum EDGE is able to complete the entire process in less than 10 minutes with a single click. This represents a speed up of two orders of magnitude.

Case Study 2: Speed up shipments of superconducting quantum chips: A company producing ~20 qubit QPU currently takes 14 days to bring it up, characterise, and test it. As each QPU needs to be characterised and tested before shipping to customers, the 14 days period adds a significant cost to the production process. With Quantum EDGE, the entire bring-up, characterisation, and testing process takes less than a day.

These case studies showcase that Quantum EDGE dramatically increases the speed of qubit and QPU architecture development, reducing the need for highly trained quantum experts in the process, and accelerating innovation and increasing the production throughput of quantum devices.

Vishal Chatrath, co-founder and CEO of QuantrolOx added, “With this breakthrough, QuantrolOx provides the quantum computing community with a viable path to developing industrial processes that enable faster development and lower cost QPUs. You cannot automate development and production of QPUs without automating, bringing-up, characterisation, and testing.”

Quantum EDGE is available immediately, integrated with Qblox and Quantum Machines and Zurich Instruments control electronics.