IBM says super-chill boxes that connect through 'cryogenic tunnels' will get quantum computers scaling

IBM has shown off designs for cooling hardware it says will allow quantum computers to scale.

Quantum computers rely on qubits – atoms or circuits put into a state of probability that means they can simultaneously store a value of zero and one – and which computer scientists make using complex circuitry or by suspending an atom with lasers.

IBM produces qubits with chips that can only run at temperatures close to absolute zero.

Big Blue’s quantum boxes therefore need serious cooling, and the company has to date made its fridges round and large.

On Wednesday, the company revealed smaller, rectangular, modular cryogenic cabinets.

The image below shows two of them holding some IBM quantum kit.

IBM says the boxes you see above are three times larger than a domestic fridge, are made of solid aluminum panels and framing, and provide “approximately 0.53 square meters of available wiring area and 2.75 cubic meters of vacuum chamber volume.” That’s enough space to hold “larger single processors and denser system configurations.” Big Blue sees these boxes as a design that it can re-use for future generations of quantum hardware, suggesting that such machines will become less exotic, and cheaper to acquire and operate.

It’s also possible to connect the coolers, which matters because IBM has hit limits in terms of scaling the number of qubits it can pack into a single chip.

The company therefore envisions connecting quantum processors so they each work on different parts of a job.

Standard practice in the datacenter has long been to use racks full of hardware that nestle right next to each other, to allow for best use of space, and for neater and more manageable cabling (which can even make a difference to performance with a shorter cable path).

Short connections and clean cabling are even more important for quantum computers.

Indeed, IBM admits that its current cylindrical coolers “require long and noisy connections between processors.” Noise is the enemy of quantum computers, as it can destroy a superposition and ruin a calculation.

The boxes shown above therefore include openings through which IBM will run “quantum cables,” protected by “multiple layers of thermal shielding” that form “a protected cryogenic tunnel between systems.” Temperatures inside that tunnel remain at the extremely low temperatures needed to keep a quantum computer operating without frequent glitching and improve fault tolerance.

IBM is therefore hopeful that its boxy adaptation of racking for the quantum age will let it build bigger Q-puters, which will mean AI is not the only source of “This new type of computer will deliver amazing breakthroughs in everything” hype. ®