Amazon Unveils Its First Quantum Computing Prototype Chip ‘Ocelot’; Takes on Google’s Willow & Microsoft’s Majorana 1

Amazon Web Services on Thursday launched its first ever quantum computing chip, joining a plethora of big tech conglomerates entering the quantum chip space. Amazon believes that the chip, known as Ocelot, helps in resolving a key problem for quantum computing systems, potentially accelerating the development of functional quantum computers.

Amazon made its statement just a week after Microsoft unveiled Majorana 1, a quantum chip of its own making, while Google had already unveiled its quantum computing chip, Willow, in December last year. For the tech giants, taking the lead in quantum computing would be a huge opportunity that would guarantee them a first-mover advantage in a potentially explosive space in terms of revenue growth. 

Ocelot Quantum Computing Prototype Chip

Amazon has internally fabricated a nine-qubit processor called Ocelot. According to the company, Ocelot can save up to 90% on implementation costs for quantum error correction when compared to existing methods.

Quantum computers operate on qubits, which are based on the ideas of quantum mechanics, while classical computers process text and images in binary code made up of bits. Qubits exhibit the superposition property, which means that they can exist in both the excited state (with a value of 1) and the ground state (with a value of 0) at the same time.

Because of this, quantum computers are able to process vast volumes of data far more quickly than traditional computers. Tasks that would take a conventional computer hundreds or thousands of years to complete could occasionally be completed in minutes by quantum computers.

According to Amazon, Ocelot's foundational architecture was created with error resistance in mind.

“We believe that Ocelot's architecture, with its hardware-efficient approach to error correction, positions us well to tackle the next phase of quantum computing: learning how to scale,” Amazon’s head of quantum software applications, Fernando Brandão, and head of quantum hardware, Oskar Painter, said in a statement.

“Scaling frugally using hardware efficiency will allow us to achieve more quickly and cost-effectively an error-corrected quantum computer that benefits society,” the two added.

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What is Error Correction?

Qubits are usually elementary particles such as electrons or photons, which are extremely sensitive to vibrations, heat, and electromagnetic interference from cell phones and Wi-Fi networks and are prone to errors.

The process of rectifying these mistakes and ensuring a quantum computer operates correctly and precisely is known as error correction. 

According to Amazon, the Ocelot chip facilitates bosonic error correction, an essential step in determining how to get quantum computing systems to the point where they can regularly solve calculations that would take traditional computers years to finish.

The company states that its researchers have integrated "cat qubits" and quantum error correction components onto a scalable microchip. Cat qubits - named after the well-known Schrödinger's cat thought experiment - inherently suppress certain forms of errors, lowering the resources needed for quantum error correction.

“In the future, quantum chips built according to the Ocelot architecture could cost as little as one-fifth of current approaches, due to the drastically reduced number of resources required for error correction. Concretely, we believe this will accelerate our timeline to a practical quantum computer by up to five years,” said Oskar Painter, AWS director of Quantum Hardware.

Amazon's announcement is only the most recent in a series of new initiatives in the quantum computing space from major tech companies vying to develop a practical quantum computer that can perform computations on a variety of subjects, including materials sciences and healthcare.

Microsoft unveiled its Majorana 1 chip last week, claiming it employs a new type of material known as a topoconductor.  Although some experts doubt the claim, Microsoft claims that the topoconductor utilises a new form of matter that is not solid, liquid, or gas but rather a topological state.

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