AWS unveils its quantum chip prototype, Ocelot

Amazon Web Services launched its first computing chip designed specifically to support quantum computing on Thursday, joining IBM, Microsoft and Google in debuting such products. 

Created between researchers at AWS and the California Institute of Technology, the new Ocelot chip’s starring feature is its error-correcting architecture that prevents external noise from disrupting calculations the chip and its corresponding hardware are working to execute. In a press release, AWS noted that Ocelot’s architecture has the potential to reduce the resources needed for sufficient error correction by five to 10 times. 

The qubits — or quantum bits — Ocelot uses are called cat qubits, in honor of physicist Erwin Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment, Schrödinger’s Cat, which is used to explain quantum superposition. Cat qubits are a type of superconducting qubit, and are superimposed in various states between 0 and 1. This property intrinsically makes cat qubits resistant to noise and capable of supporting quick error correction, both vital for quantum computing. 

“We believe that if we’re going to make practical quantum computers, quantum error correction needs to come first. That’s what we’ve done with Ocelot,” said Oksar Painter, the AWS head of Quantum Hardware. “We didn’t take existing architecture and then try to incorporate error correction afterwards. We selected our qubit architecture with quantum error correction as the top requirement.”

AWS said that it tested for error correction efficacy and also repeated tests on how well the logical qubits it composed held information to be processed. Painter said that the outcome of the experiments convinced him that Ocelot’s qubits can be scaled for more performative computing machines. 

“Quantum error correction relies on continued improvements in the physical qubits," Fernando Brandao, the AWS director of Applied Science, said. “We can’t just rely on the conventional approaches to how we fabricate chips. We have to incorporate new materials, with fewer defects, and develop more robust fabrication processes.”

Ocelot remains a laboratory prototype, with AWS researchers continuing to refine its design and capabilities. Painter said that the company believes it still has several more stages of scaling to undertake with Ocelot, as well as more engineering problems to address, and will continue collaborating with academia to advance the fundamental research required to bring a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer to life. 

“Right now, our task is to keep innovating across the quantum computing stack, to keep examining whether we’re using the right architecture, and to incorporate these learnings into our engineering efforts,” he said. “It’s a flywheel of continuous improvement and scaling.”

Other large tech companies are engineering their own quantum-designed computing chips and processors. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced its new quantum computing-designed chip, Majorana 1, which leverages subatomic Majorana particles to act as qubits. 

Advances in the software and hardware crucial to scaling the burgeoning quantum computing industry are multifaceted, with disciplines like materials science, photonics and large-scale infrastructure needs as among the most pressing challenges researchers are working to solve.