HRL Laboratories has introduced a silicon quantum processor with a cryogenic CMOS controller that performs real-time error correction without external electronics, as detailed in an article on Nature.
The system architecture includes an 18-qubit chip, a controller, and a superconducting ribbon cable.
In this setup, external racks of control electronics are replaced by a CMOS chip located directly inside the cryostat: once initialized, it runs the program without further external intervention. The cable transmits hundreds of control signals and, according to the authors, limits heat influx to the colder stage with the qubits.
According to HRL, the processor is a three-row array of 54 interconnected quantum dots, configurable into 18 exchange-only qubits. The authors claim that control errors were ten times lower than previous demonstrations for this type of qubit, with each operation taking less than a microsecond.
The system also demonstrated approximately fivefold error suppression as the number of qubits increased in quantum repetition code mode. HRL described this as the first demonstration where error correction was fully performed by a cryogenic controller without room-temperature electronics.
“The technologies that enabled traditional computing systems were not just the highest performing. They could be produced cheaply and at scale. We believe quantum computing will follow a similar path,” said HRL President and CEO Rob Vazquez.
In June, IBM acquired the company, which was previously jointly owned by Boeing and General Motors.
In July, researchers from Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and NASA proposed a model to assess the interaction of quantum processors with classical supercomputers.
