Multicore NISQ Processors on Silicon Chips

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Quantum computers represent harnessing nature at its deepest level to build the most capable computing machines we can imagine based on the laws of physics we know today. They have been predicted to transform areas ranging from logistics, to the discovery of materials and drugs, and security. The most profound impacts of quantum computing will require the full correction of errors in the calculation, and this capability is expected to require up to millions of quantum bits, or 'qubits', all connected by quantum links. However, there is mounting evidence that even relatively small-scale quantum processors, without error correction, will be capable of solving useful problems and offering disruptive advances. For example, a quantum computer with just 53 elementary quantum bits (and no error correction) has recently beaten the world's most powerful supercomputer in a competition to solve a computation problem. However, the computation problem chosen was a contrived one of no practical value, designed to favour the quantum computer, and it remains an open and important challenge to use such small-scale quantum processors to solve useful problems and achieve what some have termed 'quantum advantage'.One way to enhance the power of small-scale quantum processors is to operate them in parallel -- essentially taking many copies of the quantum processor and giving them related tasks to solve. In practice, this 'multi-core' approach can offer substantial speed-ups for quantum algorithms design for modelling materials and drugs. However, implicit in this approach is a low 'cost per qubit', which allows the manufacture of many independent quantum processors, and the ability to interface the quantum processors to a conventional computer for control. Silicon offers a platform for quantum computing which is ideally suited to this approach, being able to leverage CMOS technology to produce qubits, as well as the conventional electronics to connect the quantum processors to the required controller. In this feasibility project, we will further develop the multi-core quantum processor concept in silicon, both experimentally and theoretically, to establish how it can be realised using CMOS technology and what its predicted capabilities will be and what new problems it will be able to solve.