Xanadu announces collaboration with GlobalFoundries to accelerate development of fault-tolerant photonic quantum computers

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Mar 07, 2022, 08:45 ET

Xanadu to leverage GF Fotonix™ advanced 300mm silicon photonic platform, for volume manufacturing of key components needed for quantum error-correction and fault-tolerance

TORONTO, March 7, 2022 /PRNewswire/ - Xanadu today announced a collaboration with GlobalFoundries^® (GF^®) to take the first steps toward high-volume manufacturing of photonic chips for universal and fault-tolerant quantum computers. Taking advantage of the sophistication and rich feature set offered by GF Fotonix™, Xanadu is now designing integrated photonic devices, used for implementing quantum error correction, for 300mm wafer fabrication.

Error correction is a procedure vital for achieving fault-tolerance, which is needed to deliver on the promise of quantum computing to solve computational problems previously thought to be intractable. This exponential increase in computational power will transform a wide range of industries, resulting in major advances in everything from cancer therapeutics to high performance battery materials.

Unlike other approaches, Xanadu's architecture implements error correction on silicon photonic chips that operate fully at room temperature, using photodetector technology borrowed from the optical telecommunications and LIDAR industries. This makes Xanadu's approach uniquely compatible with existing silicon photonics manufacturing capabilities like those developed and honed by GF.

GF Fotonix is a monolithic platform, the first in the industry to combine its differentiated 300mm photonics features and 300GHz-class RF-CMOS on a silicon wafer, delivering best-in-class performance at scale.

"GF Fotonix moves data at the speed of light using our advanced processes that combine affordable, efficient and proven CMOS manufacturing benefits with the optical capabilities of silicon photonics," said Anthony Yu, vice president Computing and Wired Infrastructure at GF. "We are excited to collaborate with Xanadu to use GF Fotonix features for error correction which is vital to advancing quantum computing."

The first fully functional devices designed by Xanadu and fabricated by GF will be ready by the end of 2023.

"Many chips, operating in parallel and networked together, are required to process the large number of qubits involved in fault-tolerant quantum computing algorithms," said Zachary Vernon, Head of Hardware at Xanadu. "Leveraging an existing advanced 300mm platform like GF Fotonix gives us a huge advantage in the race to deliver a useful, error-corrected quantum computer."

About Xanadu:
Xanadu is a Canadian quantum technology company with the mission to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere. Founded in 2016, Xanadu has become one of the world's leading quantum hardware and software companies. The company also leads the development of PennyLane, an open-source software library for quantum computing and application development. Visit www.xanadu.ai or follow us on Twitter @XanaduAI.

SOURCE Xanadu