According to ITNA and citing Interesting Engineering, IBM has unveiled its first modular cryogenic quantum refrigerator, which can provide a single cooling environment for hundreds of quantum chips by connecting its modules.
This cooling system, capable of cooling below 15 millikelvin, is an important step toward producing a large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer by 1408 in the Iranian calendar.
According to the company, unlike silicon-based computers that use binary bits, quantum computers use qubits that can store multiple values and perform computations in parallel.
Qubits typically operate at very low temperatures close to absolute zero, and researchers have reached these temperatures using multi-stage dilution refrigerators.
By changing the rectangular shape of its cooling systems, IBM has enabled denser wiring integration. In a recent demonstration, two new operational modules were combined and were able to reach 4 kelvin in less than five days and soon thereafter reach the final temperature below 15 millikelvin.
It is worth noting these temperatures are 180 times colder than deep space. These modules, with heights and widths of over 2.4 meters, use IBM's e‑coupler technology to connect directly with quantum processors, allowing multiple quantum chips to communicate and share information.
Additionally, besides hardware, IBM is focusing on the software required for a fault-tolerant quantum computer and last year released a new error-correcting code that reduces the physical resources needed to achieve fault tolerance.