Amazon announces Ocelot bosonic quantum chip

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has unveiled its groundbreaking first-generation superconducting quantum device named Ocelot, boasting a scalable architecture that could potentially slash the need for error correction by up to 90 percent. This development is seen as a crucial step towards the realization of practical quantum computers equipped with millions of qubits, a feat that has long been hindered by the susceptibility of qubits to noise and the demanding error correction requirements.

Ocelot was crafted by a dedicated team at the AWS Center for Quantum Computing located at the prestigious California Institute of Technology. The device is built upon two silicon chips, each approximately 1 square centimeter in size, intricately connected face-to-face with a layer of superconducting tantalum, which serves as the foundation for oscillators.

The core of the Ocelot device is the logical-qubit memory chip, which houses five cat data qubits. Each of these qubits contains an oscillator responsible for storing the quantum data. Additionally, the storage oscillator of every cat qubit is linked to two ancillary transmon qubits for phase-flip-error detection, along with a nonlinear buffer circuit designed to suppress bit-flip errors.

One of the standout features of Ocelot is its innovative scalable architecture that supports bosonic error correction. This approach is believed to outperform other existing quantum error correction methods, some of which rely on basic techniques like multiple redundancy and majority voting. Unlike conventional qubit-based strategies, bosonic codes leverage the infinite-dimensional Hilbert space of a single bosonic mode to offer inherent protection against specific types of errors.

Furthermore, Ocelot is credited as the pioneer in implementing noise-biased gate technology and is said to deliver top-notch superconducting qubit performance, boasting bit-flip times of one second and phase-flip times of 20 microseconds. According to AWS researchers, scaling Ocelot to a full-fledged quantum computer could potentially demand as little as one-tenth of the resources required by other quantum computing methodologies.

Part of Ocelot's strategy involves distributing the information within each logical qubit across multiple physical qubits, thereby shielding the data from external noise. This enables the detection and correction of errors in a manner akin to classical error correction techniques commonly employed in digital storage and communication systems. The cat-qubit architecture of Ocelot, named after Schroedinger's famous dead/alive cat, is a testament to the innovative and unconventional approach taken by AWS in the realm of quantum computing.

With the introduction of Ocelot, AWS now stands alongside tech giants Microsoft and Google in the race to develop cutting-edge quantum computing components. Microsoft recently unveiled 'Majorana1,' while Google introduced 'Willow' in December 2024. As AWS continues to refine and enhance the capabilities of Ocelot, the quantum computing landscape is poised for further advancements and breakthroughs in the near future.