Open-source platform controls qubits QICKer
Open-source platform controls qubits QICKer lead image
Since the dawn of quantum computing, scientists have built the platforms used to control qubits separately from the quantum information processing systems they run. Stefanazzi et al. unified the two parts to produce a fully open-source control platform, called Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit (QICK).
This high-performance platform is faster than its alternatives. It has been used in more than 12 experiments so far—including one that achieved high-fidelity gates for fluxonium qubits—and reduced set-up time and running time by an order of magnitude.
QICK can be customized to operate a variety of quantum processing systems, including superconducting qubits, spin qubits, 2D qubits, 3D qubits, as well as yet-to-be-created qubits as the field of quantum computing quickly evolves.
“Our control system has to be capable of controlling not only the qubits that we know today, but the qubits that will be created in the near future, because we cannot create a new control system every two months,” said author Gustavo Cancelo.
The authors plan for the platform to be able to control 50 to 100 qubits by the end of 2022. The platform can handle even more qubits if the control lines are frequency multiplexed, which would increase the number of qubits controlled by a single line.
Additionally, QICK can replace $1 million USD of equipment with one piece of modular hardware, firmware, and software worth about $20,000. A $2,500 version of the hardware is available to universities for educational purposes.
“Due to its low cost, it allows smaller institutions to have powerful quantum control without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Cancelo.
Source: “The QICK (Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit): Readout and control for qubits and detectors,” by Leandro Stefanazzi, Kenneth Treptow, Neal Wilcer, Chris Stoughton, Collin Bradford, Sho Uemura, Silvia Zorzetti, Salvatore Montella, Gustavo Cancelo, Sara Sussman, Andrew Houck, Shefali Saxena, Horacio Arnaldi, Ankur Agrawal, Helin Zhang, Chunyang Ding, and David I. Schuster, Review of Scientific Instruments (2022). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0076249 .
