Oxford Ionics announces major leap in quantum chip performance

Research and product development company, Oxford Ionics, has announced it has demonstrated the highest performing quantum chip in the world.

Oxford Ionics said the new quantum chip can be produced at scale in a standard semiconductor fabrications plant.

“The new results mark a pivotal step forwards in ion trap quantum computing and validates the scalability of the technology,” said Dr Michael Cuthbert, Director at the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre.

According to the company, building stable, high-performance quantum computers is hugely challenging. It demands the creation of high-performance qubits and a way to control those qubits in a scalable way. 

Trapped ions are currently the only technology demonstrating sufficient performance for practical quantum computing. However, their scalability has been limited due to reliance on laser control.

Oxford Ionics said it has eliminated the need to use lasers to control qubits through its development of a patented Electronic Qubit Control system. This approach integrates the highest-performing trapped ion qubit technology into a silicon chip, enabling mass production using standard semiconductor manufacturing facilities and processes.

Co-founder and CEO at  Oxford Ionics, Dr Chris Ballance, said the industry’s biggest players have taken different paths towards making quantum computing a reality.

“From the outset, we have taken a ‘rocket ship’ approach, focusing on building robust technology by solving the really difficult challenges first,” added Dr Ballance.

Advancing Quantum Computing

Oxford Ionics said it had achieved significant milestones in quantum computing, setting new industry standards in both two-qubit and single-qubit gate performance, known as fidelity. 

Unlike previous methods reliant on error correction to manage hardware errors, Oxford Ionics has demonstrated exceptional performance with two-qubit gates achieving 99.97% fidelity and single-qubit operations achieving 99.9992% fidelity.

“When you build a quantum computer, performance is as important as size, increasing the number of qubits means nothing if they do not produce accurate results,” said Dr Tom Harty, Co-founder and CTO at Oxford Ionics.

Oxford Ionics said this advancement allows for the development of powerful quantum computers using far fewer qubits. It also enables the deployment of practical commercial applications without the immediate need for complex and expensive error correction techniques. Coupled with its scalable approach, these advancements indicate a nearer horizon for practical quantum computing. 

Oxford Ionics plans to leverage its engineering successes by moving forward with the development of a scalable 256-qubit quantum chip that can be manufactured using existing semiconductor production lines.

“This is an incredibly exciting moment for our team, and for the positive impact that quantum computing will have on society at large,” added Dr Harty.

In April, scientists at Oxford University Physics said they have made a breakthrough in next-generation quantum computing guaranteeing security and privacy.

In a study published in the US scientific journal, Physical Review Letters, researchers employed ‘blind quantum computing’, linking two distinct quantum computing entities securely. This approach allows individuals, whether at home or in an office accessing a cloud server, to interact securely. Crucially, these techniques are scalable for large-scale quantum computations.

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