When Rigetti Computing released their Q3 financial report, they mentioned that they had developed a 9 qubit QPU chip and had sold one to the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center (SQMS) at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and sold another one to an unnamed U.S. national laboratory. The company has now given a name of Novera to this product and announced it is now available for other customers.a

The product consists of a chip with 9 qubits arranged in a 3×3 matrix that used tunable couplers along with a second chip with 5 qubits without tunable couplers intended for testing single qubit operations. The chip is based upon the Ankaa™-class architecture and is manufactured at Rigetti’s Fab-1 facility in Fremont, California. Specifications for the 9 qubit portion include the following:

  • Qubits: 9
  • Tunable Couplers: 12
  • T1 Lifetime: 16.8 microseconds
  • T2 Lifetime: 13 microseconds
  • Single Qubit Median Gate Fidelity: 99.9%
  • Two Qubit Median Gate Fidelity: 98.5%

Besides the chips themselves, the product includes a puck that holds the chips along with interposers and a PCB for signal routing, a tower for delivering cooling, shields to isolate the puck, and payload brackets with signal conditional devices.

The product is intended to quantum computing researchers who want to build up the full product themselves and already have or supply their own dilution refrigerators, control electronics, and software. It can be used by these researchers to experiment with quantum error correction algorithms, control algorithms, measurement and calibration techniques, and other software. The list price for the devices starts at $900 thousand with delivery times of 4-6 weeks after finalization of all the logistics. Assuming an organization needs to purchase all the other components, they should be able to assemble a complete quantum computer using Novera for under $2 million.

Additional information about Novera is available in a press announcement here and also a product page for Novera located on the Rigetti website here.

December 9, 2023