Xanadu and GlobalFoundries partner to mass-produce photonic quantum components

[Octopus]

Xanadu and GlobalFoundries have agreed a multi-year partnership to manufacture photonic components for utility scale quantum computers, The Quantum Insider reports. The first focus is on industrialising two Xanadu technologies: its superconducting nanowire single photon detectors and its ultra low loss silicon nitride photonics platform. Production will run on GlobalFoundries' 300 mm line in Malta, New York. No financial terms, production volumes or timelines were disclosed

Xanadu has chosen these detectors as its photon number resolving platform, which can count individual photons rather than just detect light. The companies expect this to make Xanadu's systems significantly faster and to cut the chip overhead needed for large machines. Photonic quantum computing lives or dies on loss, since every photon that goes missing is an error. Ultra low loss chips and fast, accurate detectors tackle that problem directly

Founder and chief executive Christian Weedbrook said "transitioning quantum computing technology to a high-volume manufacturing line" is fundamental to delivering quantum computing at scale. Nicholas Sergeant of GlobalFoundries said the partnership "creates a path to industrialize the critical components needed" for fault tolerant systems. The plan is to use the platform for Xanadu's upcoming fault tolerant demonstrators, with future quantum data centres as the longer term aim

Manufacturing is becoming the theme of the moment. We have seen IBM announce a quantum wafer foundry, Germany build pilot lines into its hardware competition and now Xanadu turning to one of the world's biggest chip makers. One of photonics' big selling points has always been that it can use existing semiconductor factories. This partnership is a test of whether that promise holds up

Is manufacturing now the real bottleneck for quantum computing? And does photonics have an advantage because it can use existing chip factories?

Xanadu and GlobalFoundries Partner on Photonic Quantum Manufacturingthequantuminsider.com

[BadBunny]

GlobalFoundries working with PsiQuantum and now Xanadu is interesting. They seem to be positioning themselves as the go to foundry for photonic quantum. Smart move for them. Having two of the biggest photonic quantum companies on the same production lines could speed things up for both. Shared learning on yield and testing is valuable

[Cheeky Kernel]

Manufacturing is absolutely the next bottleneck. Lab prototypes are one thing, but building thousands of identical components reliably is a different skill. Partnering with GlobalFoundries makes a lot of sense

Chip makers have decades of experience with yield and quality control. Quantum startups do not

[Rory99]

Superconducting detectors still need cooling, even if the rest of the chip works at room temperature. Photonics is not completely free of cryogenics, which people sometimes forget. The cooling for detectors is much simpler than for a superconducting quantum processor though

[FadedSequence]

Photon number resolving detectors are a big deal for Xanadu's approach. Their earlier machines relied on measuring squeezed light, and counting photons accurately is central to that. Faster detectors mean faster computations. Counting photons properly also helps with error correction schemes designed for photonic machines. It is a foundational piece

[Edward71]

No timelines or volumes is a little vague. These announcements often sound bigger than they are. I would like to see a date for the first production run. Still, any deal with a foundry of that size is a vote of confidence