December 03, 2024 -- Equal1, a global leader in silicon powered quantum computing, has today announced a major breakthrough for the quantum computing industry, demonstrating both world-leading performance for a silicon qubit array and the most complex quantum controller chip developed to date.    

Together, these results pave the way for the next phase of quantum computing and demonstrate the fastest way to scaling is to leverage existing silicon infrastructure.

Breakthrough qubit silicon chip metrics

World leading metrics for a silicon qubit array:

• Single qubit gate with fidelity of 99.4% and gate speed of 84ns
• Two-qubit gate with fidelity of 98.4% and gate speed of 72ns

These results were achieved on a 6-qubit array fabricated on a silicon germanium (SiGe) CMOS compatible process. The result demonstrates a key roadmap milestone and proof point required for powerful, full-scale, error-corrected quantum computer processors manufactured by existing silicon chip foundries.

Commenting on the breakthrough, Elena Blokhina, Equal1’s Chief Scientific Officer said: “Today marks a critical inflection point for Equal1 and the quantum computing industry. Equal1 has always believed that silicon is the vehicle to scale quantum computers and today, with these world leading qubit and control chip results, we have taken a major step towards this vision.”

Nodar Samkharadze, Equal1’s Chief Quantum Architect said: “This result demonstrates the massive benefit of silicon qubits – the ability to achieve the performance required for scaling in two key areas – fidelity and speed of quantum gates.”

New era of advanced control electronics at cryogenic temperatures

Equal1 also announced the world's first multi-tile Quantum Controller Chip demonstrated in Equal1's UnityQ Quantum-System-on-Chip platform.

The chip operates at a remarkable 300 millikelvin and is powered by Arm Cortex cores. This groundbreaking technology will enable scaling to millions of orchestrated qubits on a single chip, revolutionizing quantum computing scalability.

Equal1’s controller chip also has a patented AI enabled Qubit Adaptive Error Correction, tuned for each tile under the support and control of the Arm Cortex processor, by British semiconductor and software design company Arm.

This unique approach facilitates the potential for real-time error correction, combined with the flexibility to utilize current and future types of error correction algorithms.

Brendan Barry, Equal1’s Chief Technology Officer said: "Equal1 is on a mission to deliver scalable Quantum computing using commercial silicon CMOS, and our partnership with ARM is testament to that approach. We are excited about the collaboration underway with ARM as we look to deliver our integrated UnityQ processor roadmap in the years ahead".

Dermot O’Driscoll, Vice President of Product Solutions, Infrastructure Line of Business at Arm said: “Quantum commuting has the potential to revolutionize data processing for multiple uses, ranging from complex financial modeling to life-saving drug discovery.  With the integration of Arm technology at cryogenic temperatures, Equal1 is at the forefront of building a next-generation Quantum System-on-Chip, and we look forward to continuing our work with them to advance the future of quantum computing.”

These combined achievements, along with Equal1’s innovative architecture which enables all-to-all connectivity, show the huge benefit of the silicon approach – delivering high quality gates along with the speed required for next-generation algorithms to support real world applications, all enabled by existing semiconductor CMOS processes.

Dirk Leipold, Equal1’s President and Chief Physicist commented: “The vision for Equal1 has been decades in the making.  I am very proud of what we have accomplished over the past six years, and I am excited about what the future holds as we launch the era of scalable quantum computing.”