Side view of IonQ Forte EGT (evaporated glass ion trap chip). Credit: IonQ)
IonQ has improved the performance of their Forte processor from #AQ29 ro #AQ35. IonQ’s #AQ performance metric is based upon work performed by the QED-C to develop a quantum performance benchmark. As can be seen in the picture below the improvement allowed the machine to run larger versions of the Phase Estimation and Hamiltonian Simulation test with an increase of six qubits from 29 to 35. Although that may not seem very large, it represents an increase in the number of potential quantum states by a factor of 64.
The improved performance was achieved through a combination of hardware optimization including adding additional qubits and new detection optics to the Forte along with application optimization, and error mitigation. The company indicated they were able to achieve the #AQ35 performance level roughly one year earlier than planned. It appears they were able to make these improvements in the current generation Forte system rather than the next generation Forte Enterprise system slated for 2025.
Additional details about IonQ achieving this milestone are available in a new release available here and a blog posting with more technical details here.
January 25, 2024