Finnish startup starts shipment of its silicon-based 4-qubit quantum chip

This achievement marks the first successful production run from its manufacturing site in Espoo, Finland. These chips are now enroute to key partners worldwide, serving as a crucial toolkit for advancing research and development efforts. The initiative aims to simplify and expedite the construction of stable logical qubits, thereby hastening the application of quantum computing to solve complex challenges.

While first-generation quantum computers have demonstrated remarkable computational capabilities, tackling specialised problems in fields such as pharmaceuticals, logistics, space, and material sciences demands greater computational strength. As the global community sets ambitious goals for quantum computing, the challenge remains to scale computing power efficiently to meet these demands, a goal current methodologies fall short of achieving.

SemiQon also reported significant progress in its approach to merge classical and quantum elements at cryogenic temperatures. This advancement was demonstrated through the creation of fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator metal-on-semiconductor (FDSOI-MOS) transistors exhibiting exceptionally low noise and enhanced control, characterised by a record low sub-threshold swing. These transistors are set to form the foundation of a cryogenic integrated circuit (IC), which is a crucial step towards developing quantum ICs for scalable and cost-effective quantum computing.

The findings are set to be shared in a peer-reviewed international scientific article currently under review. Since initiating its chip manufacturing line at the Micronova Centre for Applied Micro and Nanotechnology in Espoo last year, SemiQon has formed numerous partnerships with universities and commercial entities. These collaborations aim to advance quantum computing towards achieving practical physical and logical qubits. The first batch of SemiQon chips has already been dispatched to strategic partners across the globe for further testing and research.

Professor Dominik Zumbühl from the University of Basel, Switzerland, a strategic collaborator with SemiQon, highlighted the impact of these developments: “SemiQon’s prototype devices and their proposed fast iteration of the new generation of devices are beneficial and necessary for the research community to experiment on and push the boundary of public research.”

In April 2024, SemiQon will participate in the Quantum.tech USA event in Washington DC, USA, to present its vision and strategies for cost-efficient advancements in quantum chip manufacturing. The company continues to engage closely with the quantum computing ecosystem, from research groups to full-stack companies, actively seeking additional partnerships to bring scalable quantum computing solutions to fruition.