Quantum computers with very large numbers of qubits are considered essential for applications in materials and drug development, Logistics, energy supply and AI. Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich are developing cryogenic integrated circuits to break through current scaling limits.
In future, quantum computing is expected to help develop better medicines and materials, optimise complex systems in Logistics, finance and energy supply, search through large amounts of data more quickly, and advance AI applications. However, this requires a significantly larger number of reliable electronic components than current systems can provide.
Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich are therefore developing integrated circuits to overcome current limitations in the scaling of quantum computing. A key problem is connecting the qubits to the necessary electronics: the currently available cooling capacity is sufficient for fewer than 1,000 coaxial cables, whilst even 150 qubits incur cabling costs of around 4 million US dollars.
The approach relies on cryogenic, integrated electronics. Extremely low-power ICs are being developed. This includes qubit-aware design of cryogenic integrated circuits and qubit-specific electronic architectures. The rationale is that the large number of reliable electronic components required calls for commercial solutions.
Cryogenic ICs for qubit biasing, qubit readout, qubit shuttling and qubit manipulation have already been implemented. In future, further system components are to be developed as cryogenic ICs, integrated into the system and local control loops implemented.
Other areas of focus include consultancy on cryogenic ICs and system integration, the industrial development of cryogenic circuits, and the experimental integration of these systems into commercial quantum systems.
Further information: https://www.ica.fz-juelich.de/
Director of the Peter Grünberg Institute - Integrated Computing Architectures (ICA | PGI-4) & Full Professor Communication Systems, University of Duisburg-Essen
