Intel advances wafer-scale qubit production

Intel says it has made progress in manufacturing quantum chips using standard CMOS processes. The processor giant claims a 95 percent yield for silicon spin qubit devices fabricated on a 300 mm wafer. “The high yield and uniformity achieved show that fabricating quantum chips on Intel’s established transistor process nodes is the sound strategy and is a strong indicator for success as the technologies mature for commercialization,” said James Clarke, director of Quantum Hardware at Intel.

A quantum computer capable of performing calculations of practical relevance will likely need to be equipped with thousands of so-called logical qubits. These are groups of physical qubits functioning as one to compensate for the fact that quantum states are inherently instable. Intel is betting that CMOS processes are the best way to reach the millions of physical qubits required.