QuEra
NEW: AWS and QuEra expand strategic collaboration to bring fault-tolerant quantum computing to Amazon Braket
Overview
QuEra Computing is shaping the future of information systems by developing advanced quantum computing hardware, software, and applications. Leveraging a scalable platform using neutral-atom qubits, our systems enable customers and partners to explore the power of quantum processors with hundreds of qubits. Our hardware further combines this power with flexible, user-defined qubit connectivity, which allows customers to directly encode problems in hardware-efficient ways, reducing the overhead on quantum resources. Together, these features open new opportunities to test the limits of quantum versus classical solutions to business-oriented applications, and to enable scientific breakthroughs.
Quantum computing with neutral atoms
QuEra’s quantum computing technology uses lasers to arrange and excite individual neutral atoms into highly energetic states. These excited-atom qubits naturally interact at a distance, enabling entanglement and a multi-qubit connectivity that can be turned on and off at will. As atomic positions can be rearranged from one calculation to the next, these processors present extremely flexible and programmable layouts for their users. The ease of assembly and control, and the strong quantum coherence properties of neutral atoms, uniquely positions the technology to access new frontiers in simulating large quantum systems, exploring quantum optimization, and sampling.
QuEra’s Aquila processor
Aquila is QuEra’s first generation of quantum processing units (QPU) available on Amazon Braket. It operates up to 256 qubits in analog mode. The qubits have long lifetimes, supporting tens of qubit flips before decoherence sets in.Problems are encoded in the processor layout, and in the continuous evolution of its quantum states under their native Hamiltonian. The analog mode supports a wide range of algorithms for tasks that are hard to perform classically. These include adiabatic preparation of ground states, out-of-equilibrium quantum dynamics, or sampling of the distribution of states in the device’s Hilbert space.
Our flexible processor technology allows our first-generation device, Aquila, to operate as a single processor with up to 256 qubits. Aquila can also increase throughput by multiplexing smaller work batches in sub-processors working in parallel. The processors are highly programmable, enabling users to define periodic or aperiodic geometries, and by layout redesign, users may specify different qubit connectivity patterns to favor encoding their problem of interest.
Aquila is naturally suited for simulating other quantum systems to derive meaningful insights into quantum physics problems. These quantum-born problems range from phase transitions in condensed quantum matter, to particle collision dynamics in high-energy physics.
Beyond scientific research, Aquila’s native Hamiltonian also enables the encoding of general optimization problems. Its dynamics provide direct access to solutions of Maximum Independent Sets, bringing Aquila’s quantum power to bear on NP-complete combinatorial optimization via graph coloring problems. Applications for these are myriad, including protein design, traffic coordination, and ad-hoc networking.
Customers can program Aquila in two steps: first, encoding the problem by defining atom positions to fix the processor qubit layout and connectivity; and second, specifying the quantum evolution by determining the time series of the atomic drive parameters, similar to deciding the quantum gates of digital machines and prescribing a particular algorithm.
Aquila’s users can choose the layout and connectivity of qubits in each task, with up to a coordination number six. This flexibility enables several interesting computing strategies. For example, users may parallelize smaller calculations by defining simultaneous sub-processors of few clustered atoms. They can also mimic geometric aspects of problems within the processor, directly mapping atom positions to lattices, the shape of molecules, or the geographic positions of nodes of a power distribution grid, retail stores, or network antennae.