Now you can buy your own quantum computer

Quantum computers once seemed like fantasy machines of the future. Now, the DIY kit means that anyone with enough money and engineering skills can have their own.

Barcelona-based quantum computing company Qilimanjaro created EduQit with a “flat furniture” approach – collecting all the pieces and giving customers the job of putting them together.

EduQit contains a chip made of tiny superconducting circuits that is the heart of a quantum computer. There is also a special refrigerator in which the chip is installed and plugged in, along with a set of electronic devices that use radio waves and microwaves to control the chip and read the results of its calculations. All this is combined with a lot of racks, power cables and other devices that help complete the quantum computer.

Putting it all together is not a trivial task, but EduQit comes with instructions. Marta Estarellas at Qilimanjaro says the team offers training from its researchers and support during the construction process. According to her, the training would take up to three months, while the entire system would be ready for launch after at least 10 months of work.

The EduQit quantum computer comes with five qubits, which is less than a tenth of the size of state-of-the-art devices, but also costs only around €1 million, making it much cheaper. Most quantum computers are currently manufactured either by tech giants or particularly well-funded start-ups and research institutions. By comparison, Google said it’s trying to reduce component costs by a factor of 10 the price of one machine under 1 billion dollars.

Smaller commercial machines are already for sale, but do not come as a complete set. For example, the California company Rigetti sells a small superconducting quantum computer for research and development starting at around $900,000 for just the main chip and a few small components, which is roughly analogous to buying just the motherboard of a classic computer, but not the monitor or keyboard. Any research team that acquires it would have to purchase the rest of the components themselves.

Qilimanjaro targets a number of research institutions where a lack of resources puts quantum computing technology out of reach. The company focuses in particular on how it could provide the next generation of researchers with direct experience with its construction and operation.

Students can currently access quantum computing through the cloud or by working with computer simulations of quantum systems, but EduQit will allow them to develop more practical skills, Estrellas says. In this way, EduQit could become the quantum equivalent of the Raspberry Pi, a small and easily modifiable computer that started out as an educational tool but has become widely used by DIYers and scientists.

From cracking the encryption that secures the internet to simulating the behavior of molecules to discover new drugs, quantum computers promise to tackle calculations unmanageable even for the world’s best supercomputers. However, the chips are fragile and prone to errors. Building quantum computers that can realize this potential depends on finding better ways to protect and control them.

A quantum computer comparable to EduQit could rival the most advanced equipment available in some of the most sophisticated laboratories ten years ago. The fact that it can be sold as a DIY kit shows how much quantum computing has advanced in recent years.

Katia Moscowitz at Quantum Machines says there are many open questions for the future of quantum computers, and the more people get a chance to play with them, the more likely they are to find the answers.

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