French photonics company ‘Quandela’ seeks domestic partners and promotes joint development
Cooperation in three areas including hardware manufacturing, system integration, AI, and HPC linkage
(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Kwon Ha-young = French photonic quantum computing company Qandela is starting to build a cooperation system with domestic companies and research institutes.
The plan is to apply Korea's semiconductor and photonic manufacturing capabilities to the development of error correction quantum computing (FTQC) technology.
Qandela held a press conference at Centropolis in Jongno-gu, Seoul on the 28th and announced its Korean business strategy for the next two years and a mid- to long-term technology roadmap for FTQC implementation.
Qandella, established in France in 2017, researches and develops all related technologies, from single light sources to photon quantum processing units (QPU), and quantum computing systems and software.
◇ From hardware manufacturing to HPC integration… Seeking domestic partners
There are three areas of cooperation proposed this time: optical quantum hardware manufacturing, cryogenic control and system integration, and quantum system operation based on artificial intelligence (AI), graphics processing unit (GPU), and high-performance computing (HPC). The goal is a cooperative structure that leads from hardware manufacturing to system integration, verification/verification, and actual operation.
“Expanding the performance of photonic quantum computers ultimately depends on semiconductor-level precision manufacturing and inspection capabilities,” said Nicolo Somaschi, CEO of Qandela. “We will find domestic partners over the next two years to review the suitability for mass production of photonic modules, and reflect the results in the technology roadmap leading to error correction quantum computing.”
He added, "We will create practical cases of cooperation with Korean companies and research institutes and develop Korea into a major base for cooperation in the Asian region in the long term."
In the field of quantum chip manufacturing, cooperation is centered on heterogeneous integration technologies of integrated photonic circuits (PIC), electronic integrated circuits (EIC), single photonic sources, and superconducting nanowire detectors. We plan to utilize the advanced packaging, wafer-level testing, and precision optical alignment capabilities of domestic semiconductor processes to verify the suitability for mass production of photonic modules and prepare a joint manufacturing roadmap.
In the field of system integration, a low-latency control demonstrator and integrated test environment will be built based on a 2~4K cryogenic platform, real-time feed forward, and high-speed control electronics.
In the operational field, we decided to jointly develop error correction decoding, AI/GPU linkage, and HPC/cloud integration technologies to promote QPU-HPC integrated proof-of-concept (PoC) in Korea.
Qandela also presented directions for forming a quantum manufacturing consortium involving Korean companies and research institutes.
It is a role-sharing structure in which Qandela shares its technology and system roadmap and QPU deployment and operation experience in Europe, and the domestic partner takes charge of semiconductor, photonics, advanced manufacturing, and system integration capabilities.
Participation in related projects, such as the quantum manufacturing challenge being promoted by the government, will also be reviewed.
◇ “Focus on error correction logic qubits rather than the number of qubits”
On this day, Qandela also released a mid- to long-term technology roadmap for FTQC implementation.
Instead of simply competing to increase the number of qubits, the plan is to focus on implementing logical qubits that autonomously detect and correct errors that occur during the calculation process.
The plan is to combine semiconductor spin technology and error correction functions with the current photonic QPU and develop it into an FTQC environment by gradually increasing system scale and computational performance.
In the long term, the company announced that its ultimate goal will be to implement a hybrid quantum-AI computing environment that connects GPU, QPU, and HPC resources with low latency by integrating photonic quantum computing with AI and HPC environments.
