Q-CTRL Announces New Error-Reduction Technique for Quantum Computing

Australia-based startup offers a new approach to defining quantum logic gates.

Q-CTRL has announced a breakthrough technique for error reduction in quantum computing that could improve the overall efficiency of quantum systems by 2500%. Australia-based Q-CTRL is a startup that specializes in applying control engineering principles to quantum computing.

Despite the promising future for quantum computing, quantum technology today is still considered experimental, and one of the biggest obstacles to progress is controlling the errors that arise when working with qubits. Failure rates are high for even simple quantum algorithms, and as you add complexity, rates of failure expand accordingly. Q-CTRL uses “...the theory of robust quantum control and advanced AI agents to automatically design quantum logic gates that are resilient against the limiting sources of error in the hardware.”

According to the announcement, “Replace all of the gates in your algorithm with Q-CTRL’s definitions (a process handled automatically in our software) and things work better, with no additional overhead for the user. Just better results. Comparing like-for-like, a four-qubit Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT) implemented using Q-CTRL’s deterministic error suppression technique achieved approximately 3X algorithmic enhancement. In contrast, an alternate strategy achieved approximately 15 percent improvement and consumed 20X more resources (the peak measurable benefit we saw on a five-qubit QFT was over 12X). For fixed resources, that means Q-CTRL’s technique is about 400X more efficient in reducing errors in your algorithms.”