A new system of control and reading electronics developed by engineers of the National Accelerator
The control electronics uses signals fromclassical devices as instructions for the computer's quantum bits, or qubits. The readout electronics, on the other hand, measures the state of the qubits and transmits this information back to the classical devices.
This system can solve the problem of control andreading information for superconducting quantum computers that use off-the-shelf commercial equipment not designed for this task. As a result, researchers often have to string together dozens of more expensive components. Costs can rise to tens of thousands of dollars per qubit, and the large size of these systems creates additional challenges.
RF command board contains more than 200elements: chips for frequency adjustment; filters to remove unwanted frequencies; amplifiers and attenuators for signal amplitude adjustment; switches to turn signals on and off. The board also contains a low-frequency regulator for adjusting certain parameters of the qubit. Together with a commercial field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board that serves as the "brain" of the computer, the RF board provides everything needed for scientists to successfully communicate with the quantum device.
The production of these two compact boards costsabout 10 times cheaper than the production of conventional systems. In their simplest configuration, they can control eight qubits. Integrating all RF components into a single board provides faster and more accurate operation as well as real-time feedback and error correction.
RF board and breadboard development tookabout six months and was fraught with significant difficulties: adjacent elements of the circuit had to exactly match each other so that the signals passed smoothly without being reflected or interfered with each other. In addition, engineers had to carefully avoid circuits that could pick up interference from cell phones and Wi-Fi.
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