Quantum processing unit

Future systems may have classical processors tightly coupled to quantum processing units.

The QPU becomes another accelerator, kind of like how we think about GPS today.

And when that happens, the interface between classical and quantum compute needs to be well-defined, which means you need a quantum microarchitecture to design against.

Second, some of the ideas being developed in quantum computing, things like aggressive error mitigation, novel scheduling under severe physical constraints, new approaches to instruction set design, those ideas can feed back into classical architecture thinking.

That's sort of like the only way, I think, or at least the, the fastest way maybe.

I wouldn't say the only way, but one of the fastest ways in which we can clearly see an advantage, you know, by removing from the system the, the QPU and then adding to the system the QPU and seeing, you know, is there...

And I think at the beginning, it will be a tiny difference, uh, to be honest, right? It will be.

But, but this tiny difference will tell us something, right? It will be like, "Hey, we built something.

Once we, we use the QPU, then we get some small advantage." But we get an advantage, then we can really see that there is a fundamental advantage here, and then maybe we can scale it up and make it more serious.

Uh, but so yes, I think it's a, it's a v- very interesting point, actually.

I would even maybe look at the quantum computer as the computer in general.

So there is a, I think, uh, a general architecture that we believe is very common.

And part of the context of the IBM acquisition is their, uh, announcement recently of the Anderen, um, fabrication plant that they're, I think, co-building with or co-investing in with New York State.

Um, and this is a 300 mil, uh, wafer, um, quantum, you know, QPU fabrication, uh-

Right

... facility.

Yeah.

[chuckles]

... "A Digitally Controlled Quantum Processing Unit." Um, and the, you know, the reason we chose that title is because we think of the controller, the interconnect to the qubits, and the qubits all together as a QPU.

And, um-