Intel hopes that the researchers will help understand the sources of errors in the processor.
Intel does many things, but the company is mostly known for manufacturing and supplying a large number of processors, many of which are named after bodies of water.
The announcement that the company is going to launch a processor called Tunnel Falls would seem unsurprising, if not for some key details. The most interesting is that the functional units of the processor are qubits.
Serial quantum computer
Tunnel Falls appears to be named after a waterfall near Intel’s Oregon plant, where the company’s quantum research team does most of its work. It’s a 12-qubit chip that lags far behind many Intel competitors in terms of qubit count, all of which make processors with higher qubit counts. True, competitors do not mass-produce their devices, preferring to give access to them through cloud services.
Intel is trying to create silicon-based qubits that can benefit from the developments that much of the rest of the company is working on. The company hopes to take advantage of what the silicon chip industry has been doing for years.
Qubits are based on quantum dots, structures smaller than the wavelength of an electron in a material. Quantum dots can be used to capture individual electrons and then use the electron’s properties to store quantum information. Intel uses its manufacturing expertise to create quantum dots and all related components needed to set up and read their state and perform manipulations.
However, there are different ways to encode a qubit in a quantum dot. This shows another key difference of the Intel project: while most of the competitors are focused solely on developing the software development community, Intel is also trying to create a community that will help it improve its hardware.
To help this community grow, Intel will send Tunnel Falls processors to several universities: the universities of Maryland, Rochester, Wisconsin and Sandia National Laboratory will be the first to receive the new chip, but the company is interested in attracting other universities and laboratories.
It is hoped that researchers at these sites will help Intel identify the sources of errors in the processor and understand which forms of qubits provide the best performance.
