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In one of the most tech-altering news, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has come up with Ocelot, their first quantum computing chip. Using this chip, Amazon aims to reduce the resource overhead of quantum error correction by as much as 90%.
Ocelot uses a stacked two-chip architecture with cat-qubit error correcting natively to highlight hardware-efficient, scalable quantum memory. Caltech and the AWS Centre for Quantum Computing are behind this revolutionary venture.
Ocelot’s architecture can leverage bosonic error correction to lower the physical qubit count and bit-flip errors. All of this is thanks to superconducting tantalum oscillators. Moreover, it empowers AWS to have a feasible, fault-tolerant quantum computer several years sooner than predicted.
Key Technical Features
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Native Error Correction Architecture: Ocelot implements bosonic quantum error correction at the hardware level, reducing overhead compared to conventional surface‑code approaches by as much as 90 percent.
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Cat Qubits with Superconducting Tantalum Oscillators: Five data qubits (“cat qubits”) leverage Schrödinger’s‑cat superpositions to inherit noise bias, while high‑quality tantalum oscillators deliver bit‑flip times approaching one second and phase‑flip times around 20 microseconds.
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Stacked Silicon Microchips: The chip comprises two 1 cm² silicon dies electrically connected in a compact, scalable package.
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Bosonic Code Realization: Ocelot is the first prototype demonstrating a scalable bosonic error‑correcting architecture in a quantum chip, marking a departure from qubit‑only designs and enabling hardware‑efficient protection against noise.
AWS Ocelot Performance and Impact
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Resource Reduction: By embedding error correction into the qubit design, Ocelot promises to lower the number of physical qubits needed for each logical qubit by up to tenfold, cutting both cost and complexity.
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Accelerated Roadmap: AWS projects that adopting Ocelot’s architecture could accelerate the arrival of practical, fault‑tolerant quantum computers by up to five years.
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Scalability: The chip was fabricated using standard microelectronics techniques. There is hope of compatibility with large‑scale production methods and paving the way for mass‑manufactured quantum processors.
Strategic Context
Although AWS’s announcement matches those of Google, IBM, and Microsoft, it stands out for including hardware-level hardware-based error correction from the start. This approach addresses the “error-correction chasm” impeding quantum hardware, which enables direct evaluation of architectural trade-offs in real-world systems.
