DARPA chose Diraq and Silicon Quantum Computing for the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, which will assess whether participating companies could create a useful quantum computer in under a decade.
DARPA has awarded two Australian startups, Diraq and Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC), contracts for quantum computing research, the U.S. agency announced on April 4. Both Sydney-based companies will participate in the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) program, designed to assess other companies to find which might have the potential to reach useful quantum computing within the next decade.
“For the chosen companies, now the real work begins,” said Joe Altepeter, DARPA QBI program manager, in a press release. “Stage A is a six-month sprint in which they’ll provide comprehensive technical details of their concepts to show that they hold water and could plausibly lead to a transformative, fault-tolerant quantum computer in under 10 years.”
Useful quantum computing (or utility-scale operation) is defined as a method in which computational value exceeds the build and operational costs.
Diraq entered into the QBI its silicon spin qubits approach to quantum computing, which is based on the CMOS manufacturing methods used to make computer chips. Diraq will place its method under more intense scrutiny as part of the program, testing its robustness.
“We are confident that our combined expertise, designs, and technologies can rapidly deliver a commercially viable quantum system concept in terms of capex per system, plus realistic considerations around equipment footprint, scalability, sustainability and operating costs,” wrote Diraq founder and CEO Andrew Dzurak in a press release.
To do so, Diraq has teamed up with other organizations:
Under the DARPA contract, SQC will work on intrinsically quantum qubits embedded in silicon chips. SQC performs its own manufacturing and said the company can iterate on new designs within one to two weeks.
“Not only is the associated funding incredibly useful, DARPA’s third-party interrogation of our path to a utility-scale quantum computer will be immensely valuable,” wrote SQC Founder and CEO Michelle Simmons in a press release.
SEE: Amazon showed a prototype of a quantum chip, Ocelot, that reduces errors with specially designed qubits.
The QBI program will have three stages.
As InnovationAus pointed out, DARPA chose Australian company PsiQuantum for the Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC) program, the group of companies the QBI program will assess. The program is not a competition between companies, DARPA pointed out. Instead; it is a survey of all companies deemed likely to produce a useful quantum computer.
Quantum computing is highly sought after as a commercial product, with its remarkable processing speed that could prove critical for drug discovery, materials science simulation, and other calculations. However, it has proven challenging to monetize and scale due to difficulties in scaling up the number of qubits able to be used in a computer; cost, especially of cooling the hardware to nearly absolute zero; and high error rates or noise.
Megan Crouse has a decade of experience in business-to-business news and feature writing, including as first a writer and then the editor of Manufacturing.net. Her news and feature stories have appeared in Military & Aerospace Electronics, Fierce Wireless, TechRepublic, and eWeek. She copyedited cybersecurity news and features at Security Intelligence. She holds a degree in English Literature and minored in Creative Writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
