The company has opted not to build small-scale quantum computers (such as IBM’s Condor, which uses a little over 1,100 qubits). Instead it is aiming to manufacture and test what it calls “intermediate systems.” These include chips, cabinets, and superconducting photon detectors. PsiQuantum says it is targeting these larger-scale systems in part because smaller devices are unable to adequately correct errors and operate at a realistic price point.
Getting smaller-scale systems to do useful work has been an area of active research. But “just in the last few years, we’ve seen people waking up to the fact that small systems are not going to be useful,” says Shadbolt. In order to adequately correct the inevitable errors, he says, “you have to build a big system with about a million qubits.” The approach conserves resources, he says, because the company doesn’t spend time piecing together smaller systems. But skipping over them makes PsiQuantum’s technology difficult to compare to what’s already on the market.
The company won’t share details about the exact timeline of the Illinois project, which will include a collaboration with the University of Chicago, and several other Illinois universities. It does say it is hoping to break ground on a similar facility in Brisbane, Australia, next year and hopes that facility, which will house its own large-scale quantum computer, will be fully operational by 2027. “We expect Chicago to follow thereafter in terms of the site being operational,” the company said in a statement.
“It’s all or nothing [with PsiQuantum], which doesn’t mean it’s invalid,” says Christopher Monroe, a computer scientist at Duke University and ex-IonQ employee. “It’s just hard to measure progress along the way, so it’s a very risky kind of investment.”
Significant hurdles lie ahead. Building the infrastructure for this facility, particularly for the cooling system, will be the slowest and most expensive aspect of the construction. And when the facility is finally constructed, there will need to be improvements in the quantum algorithms run on the computers. Shadbolt says the current algorithms are far too expensive and resource intensive.
