Hitachi Develops Tech for Practical Quantum Computers

REUTERS/Toru Hanai
A logo of Hitachi Ltd. is pictured at the CEATEC JAPAN 2017 (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan, October 2, 2017. 

Tokyo, June 17 (Jiji Press) — Hitachi Ltd. said Monday it has developed a new technology to realize general-purpose quantum computers using conventional silicon transistors.

Teamed up with Britain’s University of Cambridge, Hitachi has made it possible for the spin qubit, the basic information unit in quantum computing, to hold information more than 100 times longer than previous benchmarks, the Japanese electronics maker said.

The development of the technology to partially cancel nuclear spin noises in semiconductors is a big step toward enabling large-scale quantum computing, a quantum algorism and quantum error correction, the company said.

Quantum computers can be divided into the gate type, for versatile calculations, and the annealing type, for making the best selection from huge numbers of options.

Silicon quantum computers, which belong to the gate type, can calculate fast with a large number of qubits, but qubits’ instability due to the effects of the noises has been a major problem.