VTT's Five Qubit Quantum Computer is Now Operational

We reported last year that VTT had selected IQM to provide the country's first quantum computer. The program has started with a five qubit machine which is now in operation at located at Micronova, a national research infrastructure for micro and nanotechnology jointly run by VTT and Aalto University. A 20 qubit machine is expected to be installed in the next couple of years with a larger 50 qubit computer slated to be ready by 2024. VTT will be using this machine for their own research as well as a teaching tool for students at Aalto University. Currently, the machine is only available for researchers at VTT, but they plan to expand availability to others inside of Finland and potentially other countries later on next year. Overall goals of the program are to build quantum computing capability in Finland and to have a machine that will allow them to kickstart a Finnish quantum computing ecosystem.

IQM indicates that its architecture provides advantages in three key areas: reset, gates, and readout. The machine will initially be programmed with software developed by IQM with interfaces to other software platforms, such as Qiskit and CirQ, in development. A software simulator for the computer is available using the Atos Quantum Learning Machine. Atos is another partner of IQM. One advantage expressed by VTT engineers for obtaining this machine is that it allows them to perform experiments at the lowest level of the hardware, something they felt wasn't possible if there were using a quantum computer operated in the cloud far away from them.

For more about this new quantum computer installation you can view a news release on the VTT website here.

November 30, 2021