Amazon Launches Ocelot Chip as it Joins Google, Microsoft in Quantum Computing Race
Amazon has unveiled its first quantum computing chip called Ocelot. According to Yahoo Finance, the Amazon quantum computing chip could fastrack efforts to develop practical quantum computers.
The Quantum Computing Race
Lately, US big techs have been unveiling quantum computing innovations as the race to develop a usable quantum computer heats up. Google revealed a quantum chip called Willow in December of last year. Amazon announced the new chip during an event held on February 26. The company’s announcement comes barely a week after Microsoft unveiled its quantum chip known as Majorana 1.
Amazon has said that its chips will enable bosonic error correction, a critical step in pushing computing systems to the level where they solve calculations that classic computers take years to complete. Taking lead in quantum computing will be a big opportunity for these cloud computing giants because it will give them an advantage in this emerging field.
Quantum computing has the potential to impact different industries and drive revenue growth for years to come. Unlike classical computing that uses bits that only exist in 1 and 0, quantum computing technology relies on qubits that exist as both at the same time. This boosts the capacity of quantum computers to process high amounts of information fast.
In some instances, quantum computers can take minutes to perform tasks that ordinary computers would take hundreds of years to complete.
Quantum Chips vs Classical Chips
While qubits present a huge opportunity in computing, they are fragile and prone to errors. These errors can occur if qubits encounter interference from the external world. Amazon’s AWS quantum innovation is designed to efficiently fix these errors.
“We believe that Ocelot’s architecture, with its hardware-efficient approach to error correction, positions us well to tackle the next phase of quantum computing, learning how to scale. Scaling frugally using hardware-efficiency will allow us to achieve more quickly and cost-effectively an error-corrected quantum computer that benefits society,” Amazon Head of Quantum Hardware Oskar Painter and Head of Quantum Software Application Fernando Brandão wrote in a statement.
Amazon’s Ocelot chip was developed in collaboration with the California Institute of Technology. It features two integrated silicon microchips that are stacked on top of each other. The cloud computing company says its chip design could lower error-correction costs by up to 90%.
“With the recent advancements in quantum research, it is no longer a matter of if, but when practical, fault-tolerant quantum computers will be available for real-world applications,” AWS Quantum Hardware Director Oskar Painter.
Microsoft and Google Quantum Rivalry
Tech leaders hold varying views on when quantum computing will be ready to perform high level calculations that can enable scientists to do anything, from financial modeling to discovering new medicines.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said that practically, this could take up to 20 years. Google CEO Sundar Pichai thinks the timeframe could be shorter, between five and ten years. Google says its Willow chip is aimed at fixing errors that show up in the process of using quantum systems.
The search giant claims that this chip will be useful in scaling quantum computing in the coming years. Microsoft says its Majorana 1 quantum computing chip uses a material known as topoconductor. This material leverages a new state of matter that’s neither gas nor solid in a topological state. Some experts have expressed skepticism towards this claim.
Even with these developments, it will take time before quantum computing becomes a reality in households. Its systems have to run at near absolute zero temperatures and run in a vacuum. As companies continue to innovate around this technology in the coming years, it’s highly possible that the world will be entering a new computing age in a few decades.
