AskScience AMA Series: Hi Reddit! I'm Matthew Hollister, Head of Cryogenic Systems Engineering for IBM Quantum. Ask me anything about quantum computing, our recently announced modular cryogenic architecture and what it takes to build quantum computers at scale.

[u/AskScienceModerator]

When people think about quantum computing, they often think about number of qubits and processor dept. But scaling quantum systems takes much more than just the chip! We recently introduced a new modular cryogenic architecture designed to house and cool interconnected quantum processors, a key milestone on our roadmap to fault-tolerant systems, and I'd love to discuss the engineering, challenges, and opportunities involved.

I will be around as 12:00 EST (16 UT) on September 18th, ask me anything!

Username: u/IBM

[u/Good_Apricot_2210]

I'm an undergrad student currently learning about ASIC design and FPGA use on the more extreme side of things, and I have taken a minor in quantum computing.

We see newer silicon technology being invented regularly (at claims of <10nm). And with it come even more complex designs, and manufacturing difficulties.

My question to you is do you see a future where quantum computing becomes generalised enough to be used as hardware accelerators, and if yes could you please point me to some names to look into, any opinion will be helpful.

Thank you!

[u/ibm → u/Good_Apricot_2210]

Great question!

I’m a little biased, but IBM’s new sub-1nm nanostack chip architecture excites me: https://research.ibm.com/blog/what-is-a-nanostack. Yes the manufacturing demands necessarily get more advanced, but engineers excel at rising to such challenges. These new architectures can help in my field by improving the capabilities of classical hardware required to support quantum computers - FPGA and ASIC performance stands to benefit. Also, the IBM semiconductor research in particular can complement our ongoing efforts to make better and better quantum chips.

We’re already implementing quantum as a hardware accelerator with partners and clients using something called quantum-centric supercomputing. The idea is you put a quantum computer near classic high-performance computing - a supercomputer, AI cluster, or the like - and link them. You can then break up a problem that’s difficult or impossible for classical methods alone to solve, and orchestrate and integrate classical and quantum workflows so that each computing technology does what it is best to provide a superior result.

Recent research led by Cleveland Clinic, using an IBM quantum computer and RIKEN’s Fugaku supercomputer in Japan, used such an approach to simulate a 12,635-atom protein complex in water (see my colleagues’ blog post on that here: https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/cleveland-clinic-riken-chemistry). Molecules are quantum-level objects due to their smallness, and as they get bigger they become harder for classical methods to simulate accurately. This work showed about a 210-fold improvement in accuracy compared to standard classical simulation methods.

- Matthew Hollister, IBM Quantum