Philadelphia, PA. Quantum computing was a topic of interest for Keysight Technologies at IMS. Marc Almendros, quantum engineering solutions general manager, offered an overview of the topic and Keysight’s role in addressing quantum-computing applications. But first, Greg Peters, VP and GM for the Aerospace, Defense, and Government Solutions Group, emphasized the company’s participation in other areas as well, including wireless, automotive, aerospace/defense, IoT, and networking/cloud applications. “We are at the heart of a revolution,” he said, “accelerating innovation to connect and secure the world.”
Peters emphasized the company’s PathWave software workflow platform, which, he said, integrates Keysight’s design and instrument-control software as well as measurement applications. He described PathWave as an open, flexible, scalable, and predictive environment with common data formats and a consistent user experience.
Peters also described Keysight’s FieldFox portable measurement platform, a 5G field test solution, a 5G nonsignaling mmWave platform, a 5G nonsignaling mmWave OTA solution, and complete transceiver characterization platforms based on the PNA-X vector network analyzer.
Peters closed with a description of Keysight’s quantum-computing platforms and solutions, setting the stage for Almendros to delve into the topic in more detail.
Almendros began with an emphasis on scale. How big is the number 1080, he asked? It’s much larger than 1021—the world’s total data-storage capacity in bytes. In fact, he said, 1080 approximates the number of atoms in the universe, yet it also represents the amount of numbers that can be stored in only 256 qubits. Unlike classical bits, which can take only values of 0 or 1, a qubit can take on a superposition of any complex numbers, represented on the Bloch sphere, in between.
The challenge comes in accessing the information in qubits. “The information stored in the multiqubit state is not accessible (the state collapses if we read the qubits), but we can use/manipulate the state without collapsing it,” he said, adding that parallelism is the key to the power of quantum computing, providing advantages in algorithms involving factorization, optimization, and search.
Qubit control, Almendros said, is performed by applying the energy that separates qubit states with electromagnetic pulses. The technique can require phase-coherent microwave or RF pulses lasting from nanoseconds to microseconds at frequencies from 3 to 12 GHz with various amplitudes and phases (I/Q modulation). The acquisition part of the process requires real-time I/Q demodulation, pulse counting and timestamping, and FDM to address several qubits in a single channel. The control system, he said, must be scalable to hundreds or thousands of channels, it must provide tight interchannel synchronization and phase control, and it must provide real-time feedback for quantum error correction.
Keysight’s fully integrated scalable solution for quantum computing, he said, includes control software plus PXI AWGs, local oscillators, and digitizers. For a 5-qubit example, he said, the system can provide hundreds of ports of AWGs and digitizers with daisy-chained PXIe chassis, offering high channel density at minimal footprint and cost. PathWave FPGA, he said, offers a graphical programming environment and comes with a ready-to-use quantum IP library to streamline the design process.
On the exhibit floor, Keysight highlighted its quantum-computing platform as well as its solutions for 5G NR, next-generation WLAN, component characterization, radar and electronic warfare, and automotive radar. The company also highlighted various aspects of its PathWave software, with an emphasis on asset management.
