The company shows off a mix of error-resistant hardware and error correction.
Following up on Microsoft’s announcement of a qubit based on completely new physics, Amazon is publishing a paper describing a very different take on quantum computing hardware. The system mixes two different types of qubit hardware to improve the stability of the quantum information they hold. The idea is that one type of qubit is resistant to errors, while the second can be used for implementing an error-correction code that catches the problems that do happen.
While there have been more effective demonstrations of error correction in the past, a number of companies are betting that Amazon’s general approach is the best route to getting logical qubits that are capable of complex algorithms. So, in that sense, it’s an important proof of principle.
Herding cats
The basic idea behind Amazon’s approach is to use one type of qubit to hold data and a second to enable error correction. The data qubit is extremely resistant to one type of error, but prone to a second. Those errors are where the second type of qubit comes in; it’s used to run an error-correction code that’s effective at picking up the problems the data qubits are prone to. Combined, the two are hoped to allow error correction to be handled by far fewer hardware qubits.