Two engineers work on one of Qilimanjaro’s quantum computers
Qilimanjaro
Quantum computers once seemed like fanciful machines of the future. Now a DIY kit means anyone with enough money and engineering skills can have one of their own.
Barcelona-based quantum computing company Qilimanjaro created EduQit by taking a “flatpack furniture” approach – collecting all the pieces and giving customers the job of putting them together.
EduQit includes a chip made of tiny superconducting circuits, which is the heart of the quantum computer. There is also a special refrigerator that the chip is installed and connected to, along with a set of electronic devices that use radio waves and microwaves to control the chip and read the results of the calculations. All of this is combined with a smattering of racks, power cables and other devices that help complete the quantum computer.
Putting it all together is not a trivial task, but EduQit comes with instructions. Marta Estarellas at Qilimanjaro says the team offers training from its researchers and support throughout the construction process. The training will take up to three months, she says, and the entire system is ready to run after at least 10 months of work.
The EduQit quantum computer comes with five qubits, making it less than a tenth the size of cutting-edge devices, but it also only costs around €1 million, making it much cheaper. Most quantum computers are currently built by either technology giants or particularly well-funded start-ups and research institutions. By comparison, Google has said it aims to reduce component costs by a factor of 10 to bring the price of a single machine below $1 billion.
A Qilimanjaro quantum chip
Qilimanjaro
Smaller scale commercial machines are already for sale, but do not come as a complete kit. For example, the California-based company Rigetti sells a small superconducting quantum computer for research and development that starts at about $900,000 for just the main chip and a few small components, roughly analogous to buying just the main board of a classic computer, but not the screen or keyboard. Any research team that acquires one must purchase the rest of the components themselves.
Qilimanjaro targets the many research institutions where a lack of resources puts quantum computing technology out of reach. The firm is particularly focused on how it can give the next generation of researchers direct experience in building and operating it.
Students can currently access quantum computers through the cloud or by working on computer simulations of quantum systems, but EduQit will allow them to develop more practical skills, Estrellas says. In this way, EduQit could become a quantum equivalent of a Raspberry Pi, a small, easy-to-modify computer that started out as an educational tool but became widely used among tinkerers and scientists.
Quantum computers promise to tackle calculations difficult even for the world’s best supercomputers, from breaking the encryption that secures the internet to simulating the behavior of molecules to discover new drugs. However, the chips are fragile and prone to failure. Building quantum computers that can realize this potential depends on finding better ways to protect and control them.
A quantum computer comparable to EduQit would have been competitive with the most advanced devices available in some of the most sophisticated laboratories around ten years ago. The fact that it can be sold as a DIY kit shows how much quantum computing has advanced in the intervening years.
Katia Moskovitch of the firm Quantum Machines says there are many open questions for the future of quantum computing, and the more people get the chance to play with them, the more likely the answers will be found.
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