Silicon Photonic Chips: Solving Two Challenges for Quantum Computing. Silicon computer chips are the foundation for nearly all computing devices today. From your desktop, to the server room, back into your palm inside your smartphone, and circling Earth in the International Space Station, they’re everywhere. Silicon has a well-established manufacturing base and supply chain. However, Moore’s Law suggests we are at the close of doubling the number of bits we can place and process with silicon. Enter quantum computers – a completely new realm – to exponentially expand the speed and complexity of issues which can be solved.
Researchers from the University of Defence Technology in China and the University of Bristol have been working to build quantum bit hardware into the silicon-chip architecture. Doing so would mean obvious advantages to widespread use. How is this being accomplished? Through photons being sent along waveguides where the photons, quantum bits of light, are encoded with information. Henceforth called qubits – short for “quantum bits.”
Though nascent in the silicon-quantum chip’s development, the chip being researched is capable of basic quantum computing. It’s a starting point. With 200+ components, compatible with the common CMOS processor, it has shown quantum-unique capability in repeated two-qubit quantum information processes. This research shows promise to make quantum computers out of scalable technology, readily manufactured, and available. Therein lies why the entrenched silicon-based computing economy is the focus of many quantum computer endeavors.
Reference work is at electropages…
