In a special issue on high tech and data science “Het Financieele Dagblad”, the ‘Dutch Financial Times’, asks the question: “Is The Netherlands ready for the quantum race”. Dr. Adriaan Rol gives the view of OrangeQS on why testing of quantum chips should be faster.
Read the full publication for free in Dutch on Issuu or find an English translation of the interview about OrangeQS below.
Excerpts from the publication by Het Financieele Dagblad, with contributions from other key Dutch players in the quantum ecosystem, such as TNO, Delft Circuits and Demcon. Credits pictures & text: Contentway.
Below, you can find an English translation of the article in Het Financieele Dagblad “Testing of quantum chips should be much faster”. The original Dutch article can be accessed on the FD website and is also available for free on Issuu.
Testing of quantum chips should be much faster
Traditionally, quantum chips are tested by highly trained researchers in cryogenic laboratories, which is time-consuming and costly. A new, affordable solution for testing that quickly and efficiently evaluates quantum chips can significantly shorten development cycles.
Together with four others, Dr. Adriaan Rol is co-founder of OrangeQS, which was started as a QuTech spinoff. The company has been at the forefront of the development, and the founders were involved in the launch of the first publicly accessible quantum computer in Europe: the Quantum Inspire. OrangeQS provides products and systems to test the performance of quantum chips. The company aims to make quantum chip testing millions of times faster. “Exponentially reducing the test time per qubit is essential. This might just become a ‘Quantum Moore’s Law’”, says Dr. Rol.
Complexity
Building complex systems requires very specialized knowledge: the testing equipment and protocols needed to obtain relevant information about the performance of quantum chips demand a great deal of time and expertise from the developer. But according to Dr. Rol, the greatest complexity actually lies in the chips themselves:
“There’s a kind of paradox where all the tooling in the cleanroom already exists, but the real problem lies in testing the quantum chips. That’s because you’re working in an extreme cryogenic environment. To characterize the qubits – the basic units of information in quantum computing – and determine whether they function correctly, you have to perform all sorts of physics experiments. That’s often a semi-manual and very time-consuming process, so our first step as a company was to automate it.”
Fast calculations
Once you go beyond a larger number of qubits – over fifty – testing the chip becomes exponentially more difficult, explains Dr. Rol.“You then enter a domain where classical methods no longer work. Google demonstrated this last year with a quantum chip containing 105 qubits, which completed a benchmark calculation in under five minutes – something a supercomputer would take 10 septillion years to do.”
Moore’s Law
Moore’s Law describes how the number of transistors on a chip doubles every few years, making computers exponentially faster. A ‘Moore’s Law for quantum’ could similarly suggest that the number of qubits should double every few years. Since the testing of qubits currently acts as a bottleneck to this exponential progress, OrangeQS aims to make testing exponentially faster and more affordable as well.“That also means the entire value chain needs to become twice as efficient and cost-effective over the same period,” says Dr. Rol. “Testing is critically important in development, but it’s incredibly expensive. That’s where OrangeQS comes in.”
