Amazon Web Services (AWS) revealed a new quantum computing chip, ‘Ocelot,’ aiming to cut up to five years off its journey to build a commercially viable quantum computer.
While Ocelot is still a prototype with limited computing power, AWS believes it has found a scalable technology that could eventually produce a working quantum machine. The announcement, alongside a peer-reviewed paper published in Nature, comes as major tech players like Google, Microsoft, and startup PsiQuantum push forward with quantum breakthroughs.
Quantum computers promise to solve complex problems — from developing new materials like advanced batteries to discovering innovative drugs — that would take classical computers millions of years. However, their fundamental units, called qubits, are prone to errors, requiring a portion of them to be dedicated to error correction.
Traditionally, the industry expects around a million physical qubits to produce a useful number of logical qubits for effective computing. AWS, however, has developed a method using “cat” qubits — named after Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment — enabling one logical qubit from just nine physical qubits. This breakthrough suggests that a fully operational quantum computer may need only 100,000 physical qubits, not a million.
Oskar Painter, AWS’s Director of Quantum Hardware, stated that their approach could reduce physical qubit requirements by five to ten times. The Ocelot chip uses standard semiconductor techniques with tantalum, but AWS aims to further customize these processes.
“Innovations at the materials and processing level could significantly accelerate development timelines,” Painter noted.
AWS has not yet announced when a functional quantum computer will be ready, but this new chip marks a crucial step forward.
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