“Amazon Web Services (AWS) has unveiled its first quantum chip, named ‘Ocelot’. This chip significantly enhances error correction efficiency by implementing a technique known as ‘Cat Qubit’, which corrects errors with a minimal number of physical qubits. AWS claims that this advancement could bring forward the commercialization of quantum computing by five years. Following Google and Microsoft (MS), AWS’s entry into quantum chips indicates a shift in the global cloud industry toward quantum computing.
On the 27th (local time), AWS announced that it had developed the new quantum chip ‘Ocelot’ in collaboration with a research team led by Professor Oskar Painter at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The chip is named after the ‘oscillator’, a device that creates electrical oscillations. The groundbreaking feature of the new chip is its ability to significantly reduce errors in qubits, the fundamental units for processing information in quantum computers, compared to previous quantum chips. Oscar Painter, AWS’s Director of Quantum Hardware, stated, “It will reduce the number of physical qubits needed for error correction to less than one-fifth,” adding that it could dramatically accelerate the development schedule of quantum computers.
The research team used the ‘Cat Qubit’ technique to reduce qubit errors. The concept borrows from the quantum mechanics thought experiment known as ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’, where a cat in a box is deemed simultaneously alive and dead until observed. Unlike regular qubits that hold either 0 or 1, Cat Qubits are designed to exist in a superimposed state of both 0 and 1 simultaneously. Qubit errors can occur as ‘bit flips’ and ‘phase flips’, and the architecture of Cat Qubits is designed to make the phase flips—errors that occur in quantum computers but not classical ones—more predominant.
According to a paper published in the international journal ‘Nature’ the previous day, the research team managed to correct errors that would typically require dozens of qubits using just five Cat Qubits. AWS has claimed that the Ocelot architecture could reduce the cost of producing quantum computing components by up to 90%.
AWS is confident that, by utilizing Cat Qubits, the timeline for quantum computer commercialization can be accelerated. Painter stated, “It is no longer a question of when quantum computing will be applied to real-world applications,” and added that Ocelot represents a key step in that journey. A major challenge of quantum computers is their sensitivity to vibrations, heat, electromagnetic waves, and radiation, but AWS explained that the new quantum chip allows qubits to operate stably.
This announcement comes just a week after MS revealed its first quantum chip, ‘Majorana 1’, with both companies publishing their results in Nature. Google, the number three player in the global cloud market with a 12% share, entered the quantum computing market with its ‘Willow’ chip last December. Following the second-ranked MS (20%), AWS, holding a dominant 31% market share, has now joined the fray.
The competition among cloud providers to develop quantum chips is expected to intensify. Generally, quantum computers are operated in cryogenic conditions and require specialized maintenance, which makes them suitable for cloud-based operation. Cloud providers currently offer quantum computing services such as Bra-ket (AWS), Azure Quantum (MS), Quantum Engine (Google), and IBM Quantum (IBM).”