Honeywell Quantum Solutions has demonstrated record-breaking high fidelity quantum operations on their trapped-ion qubits. It is a major step towards producing the world’s most powerful quantum computer. Honeywell targets an operational trapped ion quantum computer by the end of 2019.
Currently the leading trapped ion quantum computer is by the startup IonQ. There are commercial quantum annealing systems from D-Wave Systems with 2000 qubits. There are superconducting quantum computers with 16-72 qubits from Google, IBM, Intel and Rigetti Systems.
The quality of qubits, and their quantum operations, is described by a metric called fidelity. It is an important feature of any quantum computer because it defines how big of a problem may be solved while maintaining its quantum advantage.
They achieved individual qubit operation fidelities of 99.997 percent, currently the best-reported performance of any addressable qubit technology.
They have successfully formed three parallel operating zones, which allows unique quantum gates to be performed on different qubits in each zone simultaneously. The process of implementing parallel, independent zones provides faster quantum algorithm execution times as well as greater options for qubit connectivity. Parallel operating zones are a key differentiating feature of our trapped-ion system and will enable exceptional capability when combined with high-fidelity quantum gates.
They achieved this success by integrating several classical sub-systems together, including precision optical control which is required for delivering multiple optical beams to form the different operating zones. To date, we have formed qubits in each operating zone and have started optimizing quantum logic gates in each region.
The techniques used to develop and demonstrate parallel operations can be further scaled to support larger qubit counts and computational steps. This provides Honeywell with tremendous capability for not only our first-generation systems, but also future systems.
SOURCES- Honeywell
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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