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Archer Materials has been granted an Australian patent for its 12CQ quantum computing chip technology, with the Adelaide-based firm aiming to develop its processor to the point where it can be incorporated into everyday devices.
Quantum computing while currently in its relative infancy, promises a significant step change in computing power once its potential is realised.
The CSIRO has predicted that quantum technologies have the potential to generate $4bn in economic benefit and 16,000 jobs in Australia by 2040 across such areas as defence, precision measurement, drug discovery and computing.
Archer’s technology is based on research co-authored by the company’s chief executive Dr Mohammad Choucair, which was published in the journal Nature Communications in 2016.
The company is aiming to develop a quantum computing chip which has the potential to operate at room temperature, integrate with common electronics and which will be easily used and maintained.
Dr Choucair – a former winner of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute Cornforth Medal for the most outstanding Chemistry PhD in Australia – recruited fellow quantum expert
Dr Martin Fuechsle, who was awarded the 2013 Bragg Gold Medal for Excellence in Physics in 2019. They are now working towards developing what Dr Choucair says will be world-leading hardware technology.
Dr Choucair said the new patent built on previous patents awarded in the US, Japan, South Korea, China and Europe. “Archer’s patents cover a new technology: a quantum computing qubit processor device based on a carbon qubit material that could potentially allow for practical quantum computing devices,” he said.
“The Qubit is the fundamental component of a quantum chip.”
Dr Choucair said quantum computing had the ability to vastly increase processing power.
“Quantum computers (QC’s) exploit quantum mechanics, using things like entanglement and superposition, to process information,” he said.
“This type of informational processing could be used to perform computations that even the most powerful supercomputers cannot perform in a meaningful amount of time, or may never be able to at all.
“This is why we need quantum computers. There are certain problems that simply cannot be solved practically using modern computing devices.”
Dr Choucair said the four areas where quantum computing’s vast processing power was likely to be most useful were simulation, optimisation, machine learning and cryptography.
While techno logy was still in its early stages, Dr Choucair said Archer was an early mover.
“Quantum computing has made long strides in the last decade, but it is still in the early stages of development, and broad commercial applications still years away,” he said.
QC is currently in the stage commonly known as the ‘NISQ’ era, for ‘noisy intermediate scale quantum’ technology. This stage is expected to last for the next decade. Even during this early time, the time frames are not prescriptive, and many hope that a number of use cases for QC’s will start to mature, using technology access and use methods familiar to us today, like cloud, edge and mobile devices.
“This is why value in the QC economy currently is in the tech development. Archer is in a unique position being one of only a few companies in the world developing a qubit processor – the brain of a quantum computer – that could potentially work on board your modern-day devices, even mobile device use.” As well its quantum technology, Archer is working on a biochip which uses graphene-based technology to enable detection of deadly communicable diseases.
“Archer is currently focused on micro-and-nano fabrication of the biochip device components and combining these components with biologically relevant reactions to detect diseases,” the company said in its most recent quarterly report.
Archer has a market value of about $180m and at the end of the March quarter, had $28.3m in cash and no debt.
By: Cameron England
From: Adelaide Advertiser, 31 May 2022, P.21.
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