Google's 70 qbit Qauntum computer. A refrigerator festooned with microwave cables cools the Google’s quantum chip nearly to absolute zero.
At the bottom of this stack is the quantum processing unit (QPU) with superconducting qubits with tuneable couplers. Each wire you can see is a control line going down to the qubits and tuneable couplers. A control line is used to calibrate, measure and pulse qubits during computation.
The wires go through several plates, which when cooled the temperature decreases as you descend down the plates, i.e. coldest at the bottom. For those interested, they use helium isotope dilution normally for cooling down to temperatures >100x colder than outer space (10-30 mK).
The wires are looping at room temperature because when it cools down, the metal contracts, and the looping stops the wires from breaking as it cools down. Google’s computer is so well shielded they account for comic rays as well. This is one kind of quantum computer, but many more types exist. As you can see the scaling for this method isn’t great due to the huge amount of wiring you need even for 70 qubits, when we need millions to run Shors algorithm.
Google's 70 qbit Qauntum computer. A refrigerator festooned with microwave cables cools the Google’s quantum chip nearly to absolute zero.
At the bottom of this stack is the quantum processing unit (QPU) with superconducting qubits with tuneable couplers. Each wire you can see is a control line going down to the qubits and tuneable couplers. A control line is used to calibrate, measure and pulse qubits during computation.
The wires go through several plates, which when cooled the temperature decreases as you descend down the plates, i.e. coldest at the bottom. For those interested, they use helium isotope dilution normally for cooling down to temperatures >100x colder than outer space (10-30 mK).
The wires are looping at room temperature because when it cools down, the metal contracts, and the looping stops the wires from breaking as it cools down. Google’s computer is so well shielded they account for comic rays as well. This is one kind of quantum computer, but many more types exist. As you can see the scaling for this method isn’t great due to the huge amount of wiring you need even for 70 qubits, when we need millions to run Shors algorithm.