SEEQC develops qubit control chips

Update: August 11, 2023

The company is developing two more chips for quantum computers.

In 2017, SEEQC was spun out of HYPRES which was formed in 1983 to develop superconducting technologies for the US government. 

The SEEQC approach to quantum computers is to build a hybrid superconducting/conventional machine.

The companies’ chips are aimed at  pairing information from the cryogenic superconducting quantum processors, which is measured in wave form, with the digitised information of conventional computers.

SEEQC calls the chips Single Flux Quantum (SFQ) and says they are capable of running all core qubit controller functions of a quantum computer at the same cryogenic temperature as the qubits. 

The company says  the “chips are also fully integrated with qubits — a critical milestone in building scalable error-corrected quantum computers and data centres”, adding thst they are “proximally located to the qubit chips at 20 milliKelvin in the form of integrated multi-chip modules with active SFQ circuits communicating wirelessly and compatible with all superconducting qubit types, including fluxonium qubits, as well as other qubit modalities like spin qubits”.

SEEQC says it has successfully tested its digital multiplexing technology which can control an 8 qubit module with just 2 wires, and versions that control up to 64 qubits are currently in fabrication, which willm reduce the capital costs and simplify the underlying complexity of a quantum computer.

The company also announced SEEQC System Red, a full-stack quantum computing system, built as a reference to benchmark the performance and capabilities of its new SFQ chips. SEEQC Red is the company’s first-generation reference class quantum computer system.

The architecture of SEEQC Red was built to mimic current generation superconductor quantum computing systems with conventional room temperature analog control and readout enabling the company to perform direct A-B comparisons with its digital SFQ chip-based next-generation quantum computer. 

With SEEQC Red, the company has achieved average 2-qubit gate speeds of 39ns and average gate fidelities of 98.4% which are among the best of publicly available quantum systems operating over the cloud.

SEEQC has raised a total of $30 million from investors including Merck’s M Ventures and LG Tech Ventures.