(DataCenter.com) Google recently offered a look inside its Quantum AI Lab, an early prototype what quantum data centers might look like. The facility in Santa Barbara, Calif. is where Google hopes to create the first error-corrected quantum computer, a key milestone in applying the technology.
The facility reflects one approach to quantum computing, but illustrates how these buildings will be very different from the current generation of cloud and HPC (high-performance computing) data centers.
Here’s a YouTube video tour of the Quantum AI Lab, in which Erik Lucero, Research Scientist at Google provides a walk-through of Google’s Sycamore processor and the cryostat environment, as well as a future roadmap for quantum computing.
A simple quantum computer is about the size of a room, featuring a cryostat that maintains the quantum processor at a super-cold temperature of about 10 milliKelvin – making the cryostat one of the coldest places in the known universe.
Google hopes to create a system in which 1 million physical qubits can work in concert inside a room-sized error-corrected quantum computer. That’s a big leap from today’s modestly-sized systems of fewer than 100 qubits. Google is currently working on building the world’s first “quantum transistor” — two error-corrected “logical qubits” performing quantum operations together — and then figure out how to tile hundreds to thousands of them to form the error-corrected quantum computer, a process the company says will take years.