In context: PsiQuantum Corp. was founded in 2016 by a team of professors and researchers working in the field of quantum computing. The company aims to create a general-purpose quantum system, and is using a novel approach compared to other major corporations striving for the same goal.
PsiQuantum has announced an ambitious plan to develop, build, and manage a “Quantum Park” in the state of Illinois. Once completed, the facility will potentially provide the first utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer in the US, offering the country – and likely the world – a revolutionary technology.
The Quantum Park is an ambitious project to “build and deploy the world’s first useful quantum computers.” The facility will cost more than $500 million and will house a quantum computer containing up to one million quantum bits (qubits). The largest quantum computers today don’t exceed 1,000 qubits, but PsiQuantum states that a million qubits are a critical threshold to achieve an acceptable level of quantum error correction.
Modern quantum computers make a lot of mistakes and require powerful, yet traditional, supercomputers to catch these errors during data processing tasks. PsiQuantum aims to solve this fundamental issue by using a silicon photonics-based architecture, which can leverage existing technology and processes to build a quantum system in a reasonable amount of time.
The silicon photonics approach should provide PsiQuantum with several benefits in building its quantum system. The planned machine can’t be operated at room temperature, as the superconducting detectors required to work with photons and perform error correction need to be cooled to a few degrees Kelvin (-450 °F). Quantum systems built by IBM, Google, and other Big Tech ventures require even more extreme cryogenic-level cooling procedures.
PsiQuantum is confident its approach will soon bear fruit. The Quantum Park facility will provide computational prowess that cannot be achieved with traditional supercomputers, the company said. Illinois-based corporations working in critical lines of business such as pharmaceuticals, energy, materials, and finance should enjoy significant benefits from these new capabilities, we’re told.
PsiQuantum will build the Quantum Park facility in partnership with the University of Chicago and other Illinois universities. The company is also working on a similar quantum computing initiative in Brisbane, Australia, which is expected to become fully operational by 2027. The Illinois project should come online soon after.