Both cooling modules have reached temperatures below 15 millikelvins and offer up to 12 times more wiring space than existing IBM systems. This is a demonstration of an infrastructure designed to enable the connection of many processors — not yet in a fault-tolerant quantum computer
IBM announced that it had successfully connected two modules Cryogenic coolingSea and created a shared cooling environment from them, as part of the development of the infrastructure that will be required for large, modular quantum computers.
Unlike a new quantum processor, the current achievement lies in the infrastructure layer: the ability to cool, wire, and connect a large number of quantum chips in the same system. Increasing the number ofqubits It depends not only on the manufacture of the processors, but also on the physical location of the cables, stable cooling, and the reduction of noise and interference.
The two connected modules are more than 2.4 feet tall and wide. In initial tests, they reached a temperature of four Kelvin in less than five days, after which the temperature dropped to less than 15 millikelvin—0.015 degrees above absolute zero.
IBM describes this temperature as more than 180 times lower than the temperature of the background radiation in deep space, which is around 2.7 Kelvin. The comparison is correct in terms of the ratio of absolute temperatures, but the practical importance of the achievement is in maintaining the conditions necessary to operate superconducting qubits.
More space for wiring between processors
According to IBM, the vacuum envelope of each module provides up to 12 times more wiring space than in the company's common quantum systems. The extra space should allow for a much larger number of connections within each module and between adjacent modules.
Instead of a conventional cylindrical structure, IBM opted for box-like modules that can be densely arranged in a row. The design is intended to allow for direct connection of individual quantum processors using the machine component. L-coupler.
The linkers are designed to transfer quantum information between separate chips and allow them to operate as part of a single system. In this way, the company hopes to overcome the difficulty of producing a single chip that includes an increasing number of qubits without compromising their quality.
Later this year, IBM plans to install Quantum processors in the cooling modules. Nighthawk, to expand performance testing under working conditions. The company estimates that by 2027 it will be able to use L-couplers to connect multiple processors into a system with at least a thousand programmable qubits.
Another step on the road to Starling
The cooling system is one of the components in IBM's roadmap for development Quantum Starling, which the company plans to launch in 2029. According to the plan, Starling will be based on 200 logical qubits and will be able to run circuits that include one hundred million quantum gates.
A logical qubit is constructed from a large number of physical qubits and allows error correction to be used to preserve quantum information throughout a complex calculation. Therefore, the number of physical qubits alone is not indicative of the practical power of a quantum system.
IBM expects that in the Starling system, each cooling module will contain thousands of qubits. To achieve this, the company needs to prove not only that the modules reach the required temperature, but also that the processors, connections, control systems and error correction work together over time.
The current announcement does not prove that IBM has already built a fault-tolerant quantum computer, and the 2029 target is still a prediction by the company. It does remove an important engineering hurdle: how to scale up the cooling environment without relying on a single refrigerator, which is limited in size and number of connections.
For the original publication: [IBM Connects Its First Modular Cryogenic Systems]
More on the subject on the science website
- IBM and Advance Present Three Demonstrations of Verifiable Quantum Advantage
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- Wolf Prize winner Jainendra Jain in a special interview: How entangled electrons became composite fermions
- Not a time machine: This is how researchers made a quantum system look like it was going backwards
- US and IBM establish first dedicated quantum chip factory
