Interactive 3D model lets you take apart a superconducting quantum computer

[Terminator]

Here is something a bit different from the usual news stories. Someone has built an interactive 3D model of a superconducting quantum computer that you can explore in your browser. It is the kind of machine IBM and Google use, with the famous gold chandelier hanging inside a refrigerator. The site lets you take it apart layer by layer, from the outer dilution refrigerator right down to a single Josephson junction on the chip

There are several zoom levels to step through: the whole system, the cryostat, the sample package, the quantum chip itself and finally the junction. You can switch between an assembled and disassembled view, hide the vacuum cans to see inside, and turn labels on or off. It also has temperature maps showing how each stage gets colder, signal tracing to follow the wiring and guided tours for people who just want to be walked through it

It appears to be a personal project rather than anything from a company or university. The source code is on GitHub under the username saadbhattii, but I could not find any announcement or write-up about it. There is no date or organisation listed on the page either. If anyone knows more about who built it, it would be good to give them proper credit

What I like is that it makes sense of the photos we keep seeing in quantum articles. Most people have seen the chandelier, but very few know what each level does or why the chip needs to sit at a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero. Seeing the cooling stages laid out with temperatures makes the engineering challenge much easier to grasp. It ties in nicely with the scaling article about how much wiring and control these machines need

It is fairly detailed, so it may run better on a laptop than on a phone or an older computer. Give it a go and see what you think. Did anything about the inside of these machines surprise you? And would something like this be useful in schools?

Inside a superconducting quantum computer

[MessiGOAT48]

The amount of wiring is what surprised me. All those coaxial cables running down through every stage, each one carrying heat in with it

It makes you realise why scaling to a million qubits is such a headache. You cannot just keep adding cables