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Intel Announces New Silicon Spin Quantum Bit Chip Tunnel Falls, Next Generation Quantum Chip to be Launched in 2024
Release time:
2024-04-02 13:02
On June 6, Intel released Tunnel Falls, a new quantum chip containing 16 silicon spin qubits, to continue exploring quantum utility to solve major problems. Tunnel Falls is Intel's silicon spin qubit chip developed to date, leveraging Intel's decades of accumulated transistor design and manufacturing capabilities.
In Intel's fabs, Tunnel Falls is manufactured on 300mm silicon wafers, leveraging Intel's leading industrial manufacturing capabilities for transistors, such as extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), as well as gate and contact layer fabrication. In silicon spin qubits, information (0/1) is encoded in the spin (up/down) of a single electron. A silicon spin qubit is essentially a single-electron transistor, so Intel is able to manufacture it using a similar process to a standard CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) logic production line.
Tunnel Falls chip on a finger (Image: Intel Corporation)
Packaged Tunnel Falls chip (Image: Intel Corporation)
Tunnel Falls chip enlarged (Image: Intel Corporation)
Schematic: Electrons under the gate of quantum dots (Image source: Intel Corporation)
Intel believes that silicon spin qubits have advantages over other qubit technologies because they can take advantage of similar production techniques to advanced transistors. Silicon spin qubits are similar in size to a transistor, about 50 x 50 nanometers, 100 million times smaller than other types of qubits, and are expected to be mass-produced sooner. A paper in Nature Electronics states that "silicon may be the platform with the best chance of enabling large-scale quantum computing."
At the same time, with an advanced CMOS production line, Intel can improve yield and performance through its innovative process control technology. Tunnel Falls achieves a yield of 95%, achieving voltage uniformity close to that of CMOS logic processes. In addition, Intel can implement more than 24000,4 quantum dots per wafer. Tunnel Falls can form 12 to qubits that can be isolated from each other or manipulated simultaneously.
Going forward, Intel will continue to work on improving the performance of Tunnel Falls and integrating it with the Intel Quantum Software Development Kit (SDK) into Intel's quantum computing stack. In addition, based on its experience in manufacturing Tunnel Falls, Intel has begun working on the next generation of quantum chips, which are expected to be launched in 2024.
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