In the next few weeks, a research group at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands expects to receive an important package. Its contents promise to increase competition in the race to produce useful quantum computers.
Shipped from the research-and-development facilities of semiconductor giant Intel in Hillsboro, Oregon, the parcel holds the first quantum computer manufactured with the techniques used to fabricate silicon chips in conventional computers. Although the silicon method currently lags behind other approaches to building quantum computers, the company hopes that the technique could accelerate the development of devices that go beyond proof-of-concept curiosities, says James Clarke, who heads Intel’s quantum-hardware development. “I think you’ll hear a lot about silicon quantum computing this year,” Clarke says.
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