Israeli researchers build country’s first quantum computer
(TimesofIsrael) Ricky Ben-David, The Times of Israel’s Tech Israel editor discusses the five-qubit machine developed by a team at Weizmann Institute. Inside Quantum Technology describes here.
Prof. Roee Ozeri of the Weizmann Institute of Science, an expert in quantum computing research in the Department of Physics of Complex Systems told Ricky Ben-Davis in a phone interview that he and a team of PhD students at his university lab have been working on the different elements of the computer for several years and have spent the past two to three years assembling the device.
“There was a lot of time invested in the know-how and in putting together the building blocks for the quantum computer,” he said. The project was led by Dr. Tom Manovitz, a quantum computing researcher, and research student Yotam Shapira.
The device is one of about 30 quantum computers in the world in different stages and one of fewer than 10 that use ion traps, an advanced technology that confines ions (molecules with a net electrical charge) in a small space using magnetic or/and electric fields.
The Weizmann computer is a five-qubit machine, roughly the level achieved by IBM’s version when the company first started offering quantum computing as a cloud service last year.
Ozeri said the team will now use the quantum computer to run advanced algorithms while working on a larger machine that will tackle larger data loads. He estimated that the larger quantum computer, dubbed WeizQC, will take at least another year.
The name WeizQC is a tribute to WEIZAC, the name of one of the world’s first computers built in Israel at the Weizmann Institute in the 1950s, “when all Israel had was swamps and camels,” Ozeri said as part of a university statement.
WeizQC is expected to work with 64 qubits and “demonstrate the quantum advantage, which until now has only been achieved by computers built in two labs: at Google and at the University of Science and Technology of China,” the university noted.
