Today, SemiQon, a Finland-based startup specializing in silicon-based quantum processors, has announced it has successfully manufactured and pre-tested a 4-qubit quantum dot array from the first production run at its manufacturing facility in Espoo, Finland. The new chips are now shipping to strategic partners around the world as a toolkit for further research and development. The aim is to help make building stable logical qubits easier and faster to accelerate the use of quantum computing for complex problems.
First-generation quantum computers have already achieved impressive computational feats. However, solving highly specific problems related to pharmaceuticals, logistics, space, and material design will require increased computational power. As researchers, ecosystems, and companies around the globe lay out their ambitious visions for quantum computing, the computing power must still be scaled efficiently to address these challenges. Current methods do not make this possible.
“We are gradually moving towards the million qubit era and the contribution of hardware is becoming more and more essential,” says Dr. Himadri Majumdar, CEO and Co-founder of SemiQon. “Our solution builds on the technological development and know-how of semiconductors and benefits from existing infrastructure and industry. Utilizing such infrastructure effectively and efficiently has allowed us to accomplish one of our first goals within a short period of time. The challenge is getting to quantum supremacy in a sustainable, scalable, and affordable manner. These new chips are our first step in a long journey to making quantum dreams a reality.”
SemiQon’s strategic path of combining classical and quantum elements at cryogenic temperatures also took a big leap forward through the demonstration of very low noise and better control over the channel using record low sub-threshold swing in the manufactured fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator metal-on-semiconductor (FDSOI-MOS) transistors. These transistors will be the backbone of realizing a cryogenic integrated circuit (IC), ultimately leading to quantum IC for scalable, efficient, and affordable quantum computers.
The results will be communicated through a peer-reviewed international scientific article, which is currently under review.
Since the launch of its production chip manufacturing line last year in the Micronova Center for Applied Micro and Nanotechnology in Espoo, SemiQon has established several university and commercial partnerships with organizations looking to move quantum computing closer to its goal of usable physical and logical qubits. The first-generation SemiQon chips are already shipped to strategic partners globally for further testing and experimentation, mainly for the advancement of research and development in the domain.
“SemiQon’s prototype devices and their proposed fast iteration of the new generation of devices are beneficial and necessary for the research community to experiment on and push the boundary of public research,” says Professor Dominik Zumbühl of the University of Basel in Switzerland, one of SemiQon’s strategic collaborators.
SemiQon will be attending the Quantum.tech USA event in Washington DC, USA, in April 2024, where they will share SemiQon’s vision and mission for their cost-efficient advancements in quantum chip manufacturing.
SemiQon works closely with the quantum ecosystem from research groups to full-stack companies and is actively discussing with more partners to bring scalable quantum computing solutions to reality.