Quantum Motion shrinks its qubit readout sensor 10,000 times on a standard chip

[StuckOnDestiny]

A British quantum company has tackled one of the hidden obstacles to building big silicon quantum computers. Quantum Zeitgeist reports that Quantum Motion has built a titanium nitride superinductor directly into a standard GlobalFoundries 22nm chip, shrinking a key qubit readout sensor by about 10,000 times

Reading out qubits normally needs bulky spiral inductors next to each sensor, which take up far too much space when you want millions of qubits. Replacing them with a tiny superinductor built into the chip solves that problem

The minimum integration time fell to about 1 picosecond, compared with a previous standard of 625 picoseconds. Part of the gain comes from a new regime in which the film's nonlinear behaviour amplifies the signal, and the work is published in Nature Electronics

Lead author Tom Swift said the team needs to think about the scalability of the entire system. Fernando González-Zalba, vice president of quantum engineering, said he believes the demonstration shows how to solve the readout problem for semiconductor spin qubits

Silicon spin qubits are attractive because they can be made in the same factories as ordinary chips, but readout has always been a bottleneck. Fixing it with standard manufacturing is exactly what the field needs. The next step is connecting the sensor to real qubit arrays, and the baseline for the 10,000 times figure is not spelled out

Will silicon spin qubits win the race to scale? And how important is using standard chip factories for quantum computing?

Quantum Motion Shrinks Qubit Sensor Footprint By 10,000 Timesquantumzeitgeist.com