Rigetti launches 84qubit Ankaa-3 quantum computer
Rigetti Computing in the US has launched its third generation Ankaa-3 quantum computer with an 84qubit processor and aims to have a 100qubit machine next year.
The re-designed quantum computer achieves a two-qubit gate fidelity of 99%, halving the previous error rate.
Ankaa-3 is now available to its partners via the Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services platform (QCS) and will be coming to Amazon Braket and Microsoft Azure in the first quarter of 2025.
Users will be able to operate these higher fidelity and universal gates for a wide range of algorithmic research, with a median gate time of 72 nanoseconds. The faster (median 56 nanoseconds), more specialized gates are useful for specific algorithms such as random circuit sampling, as recently demonstrated on Google’s Willow system.
The Ankaa-3 system uses the Rigetti 3D interconnect for more scalability from its in-house foundry using the 84qubit device announced last year.
The system has a new cryogenic hardware design that reduces the amount of metal at the refrigerator’s coldest stage to increase the efficiency and reduces the cost per qubit. A focus on thermal management and magnetic/environmental shielding also improves system performance. This design enables scaling up to thousands of qubits says the company.
For the quantum processor, Rigetti worked with the Superconducting Quantum Materials & Systems Centre (SQMS) led by Fermilab to develop a metal deposition method for qubit circuitry that allows a longer lifetime. The circuit layout was also optimized to minimize qubit losses and take advantage of the higher coherence.
The processor uses a square lattice of superconducting Josephson junctions with Alternating-Bias Assisted Annealing (ABAA). This allows for precise qubit frequency targeting, which enables better execution of two-qubit gates and increases in yield, both of which contribute to higher fidelity.
Chip-wide optimization of qubit and tunable coupler frequencies produces fewer unwanted qubit-qubit interactions, and real-time, in-hardware pulse pre-compensation produces gates with lower incoherent errors. Rigetti has also developed a robust calibration process for the gates.
“With approximately $225 million of cash, cash equivalents and available for sale investments and no debt, we are extremely confident in our ability to deliver on our roadmap and performance goals. The remarkable performance of Ankaa-3 reinforces our leadership in the superconducting quantum computing field — which we believe is the winning modality for high-performance quantum computers due to their many advantages, including fast gate speeds and well-established manufacturing processes,” says Dr. Subodh Kulkarni, Rigetti CEO.
“Our teams, across the technology stack, work incredibly hard to introduce new, innovative ways to increase our system’s performance. As we continue the journey towards fault tolerance, we are constructing computing systems with capabilities that have not been seen before,” says David Rivas, Rigetti CTO. “At Rigetti, working closely with our partners, we are committed to finding ways to put those systems to practical use.”
Rigetti plans to introduce the next generation of its modular system architecture, while continuing to increase fidelities, in 2025.
By mid-year 2025, the Company expects to release a 36-qubit system based on four 9-qubit chips tiled together, with a further halving of error rates from the current level. By the end of 2025, the Company expects to release a system with over 100 qubits, again with half the error rates.
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