Intel Describes Its Second Generation Silicon Spin Test Chip

At the 2022 Silicon Quantum Electronics Workshop in Orford, Québec, Canada, Intel described its second generation silicon spin test chip and some results in testing it. In the chip business yield is everything and Intel announced that they achieved a yield rate of about 95% across the 300 millimeter wafer in a recent test. You might ask whether yield is really critical in a quantum processor chip. After all, these are not like microprocessors that are made in the millions per week. A company only needs to obtain a handful of chips when it wants to build up its next quantum computer. But high yield is also a good indicator of process uniformity, which is critical for maintaining high qubit quality metrics for all the qubits on the chip. Intel also described usage of their new cryoprober which was able to characterize the performance of hundreds of devices on the 300 mm wafer at a temperature of 1.7 Kelvin within a 24 hour period. The company indicated they will continue using these tools along with other standard semiconductor process control tools such as statistical process control to work on continued improvements in qubit quality. You can access Intel's announcement about this development on their website here.

October 5, 2022