Background: PsiQuantum Corp. was founded in 2016 by a team of professors and researchers working in the field of quantum computing. The company aims to develop universal quantum systems, an approach that sets them apart from other major companies aiming for the same goal.
PsiQuantum has announced ambitious plans to develop, build and manage a “Quantum Park” in Illinois that, when completed, will provide America’s first utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer, bringing revolutionary technology to the United States, and potentially the world.
Quantum Park is an ambitious project that aims to “build and deploy the world’s first practical quantum computer.” The facility will cost more than $500 million and house quantum computers with up to one million quantum bits (qubits). While today’s largest quantum computers don’t have more than 1,000 qubits, PsiQuantum says one million qubits is a critical threshold for achieving acceptable levels of quantum error correction.
Modern quantum computers make many mistakes and require powerful but classical supercomputers to detect these errors during data processing tasks. PsiQuantum aims to solve this fundamental problem using a silicon photonics-based architecture that leverages existing technologies and processes to build quantum systems in a reasonable time.
The silicon photonics approach should offer several advantages to PsiQuantum’s quantum system. The planned machine cannot operate at room temperature because the superconducting detectors needed to manipulate photons and perform error correction must be cooled to a few Kelvin (-450 °F). Quantum systems built by IBM, Google and other big tech startups require an additional cryogenic cooling step.
PsiQuantum is confident that this approach will soon bear fruit. The company says that its Quantum Park facility will provide computing power that traditional supercomputers simply cannot match. Illinois companies operating in key business sectors such as pharmaceuticals, energy, materials and finance should reportedly benefit greatly from these new capabilities.
PsiQuantum is building its Quantum Park facility in partnership with the University of Chicago and other universities in Illinois. The company is also working on a similar quantum computing project in Brisbane, Australia, which it expects to be fully operational by 2027. The Illinois project is expected to be up and running shortly thereafter.
