Startup Maybell Quantum unveils ‘IceBox’ cryogenic platform

(HPCWire) Maybell Quantum has unveiled the Icebox, a cryogenic platform to power the next generation of quantum computers.
Maybell’s Icebox solves several pressing challenges for scaling quantum. Quantum computing will perform calculations in seconds that would require billions of years for today’s most powerful supercomputers, with profound implications for everything from logistics and agriculture to medicine and climate change. But achieving reliable quantum computation requires qubits – quantum computers’ fundamental building block – be in a state where they can be finely manipulated and communicated with through minute signals. Maybell’s approach to these challenges has attracted contracts from DARPA, NSIC/DIU, and leading research universities, and is now available to the quantum computing industry.
“Controlling quantum devices at room-temperature is like playing a sonata in a hurricane,” explains Corban Tillemann-Dick, Maybell’s CEO. “Cooling devices to a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, nature’s ‘speed limit for cold,’ calms this chaos to near ‘quantum silence’ so quantum operations are controllable.” Traditional quantum cryogenic systems, however, are tangles of tubes and wires that cover hundreds of square feet and often require months to set up and PhDs to operate. Moreover, to increase capacity, these systems typically become even larger and more complex.
In contrast, Maybell’s Icebox dilution refrigerator condenses a room-sized cryogenic setup into a system slightly larger than your kitchen refrigerator. It can be installed in any laboratory, server-room, or well-equipped garage in an afternoon and without infrastructure upgrades. This is accomplished through over a dozen patent-pending innovations, including Maybell Flexlines, quantum wires which offer industry-leading performance and density while transmitting far less heat and vibration (‘quantum noise’) than traditional cabling. All this is paired with streamlined, secure, open-source software and a suite of powerful user-focused features.
“The Icebox supports three times more qubits in one-tenth the space,” says Dr. Kyle Thompson, Maybell’s CTO, referencing the 4,500 superconducting Flexline traces available in an Icebox. “We listen to our customers, understand their needs, and address them. Many Icebox innovations are groundbreaking science, but some are just common sense. For example, the Icebox is the first system built with a door so you can access your qubits without taking it apart – that shouldn’t have taken 40 years.”