AWS Cat Qubits Make Quantum Error Correction Effective, Affordable

In a scene from the movie Gladiator, Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, worried about the fragility of his empire, tells his general, Maximus: “There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish.” The same could be said qubits. They are foundational components of quantum computers, and are one of thornier challenges in getting stable and usable systems up and running. A key reason is how fragile they are and how easily they can lose their quantum states (also known as “decoherence”). They are highly sensitive to any number of disturbances in their environment, from temperature, vibration, and sound to electromagnetic fields, pressure changes, and stray particles. Any of these can cause errors during computation, which puts a premium on error correction. Without it, creating a fault-tolerant, reliable quantum system that can solve highly complex commercial and scientific quantum calculations is nigh impossible. That said, the ... Read full article.