this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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Wait, seriously? That's quite a jump from the last one I heard about.
Also: it's actually 1,121 qubits, even more impressive.
Isn't that also quite the small form factor? I still had the fridge sized copper monstrosities in mind when thinking of quantum computers
The attached picture says 133 qubits, so whatever that chip is (edit: Heron) it's not this thing.
IBM's post (that the article links) says:
So, it sounds like this is actually another fridge sized system.
without a room temperature super conductor it will always be mostly cooling
These qubits oscillate at microwave frequencies where the quantum information is stored. This means they need to be kept at a temperature where the microwave frequencies are completely devoid of any thermal noise. For microwave frequencies, this temperature is just a few millikelvins above absolute zero. Unfortunately, the temperature is required due to the fundamental nature of thermal noise due to temperature. Making the qubits out of room temperature superconductor would not solve the problem of the need to cool them down - unless they can be operated at higher frequency. There are quantum computers made using light/optical photons which do operate at room temperature because optical photons are at much higher frequency which has no thermal noise even at room temperature.
So, in conclusion, everytime you hear about superconducting qubit, they are always in a giant dilution refrigerator which gets bigger for more qubits as more connections from room temperature to qubits are needed.
It looks more like Darth Vader's water heater.
I may be mistaken but the fridge sized copper monstrosity is the system that cool the quantum chip, so unless they miniaturized the cooling system it didn't change.
Yeah, from my understanding, the chip itself is about the same size as a CPU chip.
From what I remember the chip itself is pretty small, the size is all due to the cooling component.
Also keep in mind you've probably seen a development version of a quantum computer, where things are set up to be easily accessible to allow fixing and tinkering, without regard for size and optimization of space.