home Technology Computing & information processing Is this the Future of Quantum Computing?

Is this the Future of Quantum Computing?

Sep 28, 2023

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

Atlantic Quantum is a young startup that’s building quantum computers, and it recently published new research showing that its quantum computers produce far fewer errors than the industry standard.

Though quantum computers are still a few years away from real-world applications, they can be used to solve complex problems faster and better than the regular computers we use today. Their many uses include weather prediction, building lighter batteries, cracking encryption protocols, and forecasting changes in the stock market. But Atlantic Quantum CEO Bharath Kannan says that all this can happen only after overcoming some major hardware roadblocks.

According to Forbes, one of the main problems regards a key component in quantum computers- an aluminum superconducting circuit or “electrical switch” called “qubit”, which is built on silicon chips and encodes information. Nowadays scientists are still struggling to build a qubit that can be scaled to the point where it’s better than conventional computing. The goal of Atlantic Quantum is to solve that problem, and according to Kannan, they are very close.

Cofounder and lead researcher Leon Ding says this research’s findings present the first qubit architecture alternative to the standard circuits used since 2007, which makes these findings extremely important. So far, the startup yields 99.9% accuracy for a two-qubit circuit, but eventually, several million will be needed for speeds that are faster than conventional computers. Ding states that the next milestone for the startup is to increase the number of qubits in one of its systems while retaining fewer errors.

Atlantic Quantum has also recently announced a major contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory to build quantum processors for national defense purposes.

CEO Kannan also states that major tech companies (like IBM and Google) will have a hard time catching up to Atlantic Quantum’s designs since it controls most of the key patents for them.