Xanadu Unveils Programmable Photonic Quantum Chip

Engineers around the world are working to create a truly useful quantum computer that can

perform calculations for which you havetraditional computers would take millions of years. To date, most such efforts have focused on two main architectures—superconducting electrical circuits and trapped ion technology. Both have their advantages and disadvantages, and both must operate in a supercooled environment, making them difficult to scale.

Less emphasis is placed on work based onphotonic approach to creating a quantum computer. This approach is considered less feasible due to the problems associated with the generation of quantum states, as well as with the transformation of such states on demand. One big advantage of photonics-based systems over the other two architectures is that they don't need to be cooled — they can operate at room temperature.

In this new effort, Xanadu engineers overcamesome problems associated with photonics-based systems, and created a working programmable photonic quantum chip that can execute multiple algorithms and can also be scaled. They named it the X8 Photonic Quantum Processing Unit. During operation, the chip connects to what the Xanadu team describes as a "compressed light source" - infrared laser pulses that work with microscopic resonators. This is because the new system does quantum computation with a continuous variable rather than using single-photon generators.

Xanadu representatives noted that their newthe system is the first photonic quantum computing platform to go public. Those who wish to run applications on it can choose systems with 8 or 12 qubits on top of the Xanadu quantum cloud.

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