100-Qubit Quantum Computing System Unveiled

Atom Computing
(Image credit: Atom Computing)

Atom Computing, a quantum computing startup, has announced a quantum computing system with unparalleled capabilities. The company's first-generation Phoenix system can pack as many as 100 qubits that are said to be 'exceptionally' stable with long coherence times, thus providing extreme performance potential. Separately, the company announced that it had secured over $15 million in Series A funding and hired a new CEO.

Atom Computing's Phoenix can trap 100 atomic qubits (of an alkaline earth element) in a vacuum chamber with optical tweezers. Then, the quantum states of atomic qubits are manipulated with lasers. The company claims that its qubits are remarkably stable and have very long coherence times (i.e., over 100 ms), making Atom Computing's Phoenix suitable for complex computations.

Using atomic qubits in a vacuum chamber with optical tweezers is not something particularly new. Honeywell makes such systems commercially, yet its quantum computers only have six qubits. Atom Computing says that its laser technologies and platform architecture allow scaling the number of qubits all the way to 100 units. However, the company yet has to showcase such a system.

"Quantum computing has accelerated to a point where it is no longer 10 years out. The scalability and stability of our systems gives us confidence that we will be able to lead the industry to true quantum advantage," said Rob Hays, CEO and President, Atom Computing. "We will be able to solve complex problems that have not been practical to address with classical computing, even with the exponential performance gains of Moore’s Law and massively-scalable cluster architectures."

In addition to revealing the first details about its Phoenix quantum computing system, Atom Computing said that it had secured $15 million in Series A funding from venture capital firms Venrock, Innovation Endeavors, and Prelude Ventures. The money will be spent on building the Phoenix quantum computer system.

Also, the company appointed Rob Hays to the CEO and President position. Previously Hays served for 20 years at Intel, developing the company's Xeon roadmap. Later on, he worked at Lenovo, where he developed the company's strategy for data center products and services.

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • jkflipflop98
    The first group that makes an actual high performance quantum CPU is probably going to keep it a secret until they use it to insta-mine every cryptocurrency out there.
    Reply
  • OriginFree
    jkflipflop98 said:
    The first group that makes an actual high performance quantum CPU is probably going to keep it a secret until they use it to insta-mine every cryptocurrency out there.


    Naaa, they will sell it to a government who will use it to spy on other countries, people and if it's the NSA their own people.
    Reply
  • GenericUser
    Why not both?
    Reply
  • husker
    "Quantum computing has accelerated to a point where it is no longer 10 years out. The scalability and stability of our systems gives us confidence that we will be able to lead the industry to true quantum advantage," said Rob Hays, CEO and President, Atom Computing.

    It is at least 10 years out. There are probably technical hurdles that he is not even aware of yet.
    Reply