BERKELEY, Calif., Jan. 4, 2024 — Rigetti Computing, Inc., a pioneer in full-stack quantum-classical computing, announced today that its 84-qubit Ankaa-2 quantum system was made publicly available to all of its customers via Rigetti’s Quantum Cloud Services (QCS) on December 20, 2023.

The Ankaa-2 system is based on Rigetti’s fourth generation chip architecture that features tunable couplers and a square lattice, enabling high fidelity 2-qubit operations compared to the Company’s previous systems. Ankaa-2 is also the Company’s highest qubit count quantum processing unit (QPU) available to the public.

Following the internal deployment of Ankaa-1, the Company made iterative improvements through internal R&D to support enhancements to Ankaa-2. As a result, Ankaa-2 achieved a 2% median 2-qubit gate error rate — less than half the error rate of the Company’s previous systems. These fidelity improvements can be attributed to a variety of technology updates to the Ankaa-2 system:

• Implementation of a new chip fabrication process, leading to qubits with fewer atomic defects that would otherwise reduce quantum coherence times
• Incorporation of new superconducting PCB technology that improves thermal performance
• Electronics improvements that generate control signals with less noise

“Rigetti’s focus on improving our median 2-qubit fidelities is a crucial part of our mission to build the world’s most powerful computers. Useful quantum computers will need not only a large number of qubits, but also high quality qubits. Reaching 98% fidelity on the Ankaa-2 system is the result of years of innovation and commitment from our teams across the technology stack. Now that the Ankaa-2 system is available to all of our customers and partners, I look forward to focusing on continued progress in accelerating this transformational technology,” says Dr. Subodh Kulkarni, Rigetti CEO.

“I am thrilled with the progress we are making with our Ankaa-class architecture against our QPU roadmap and qubit performance. To reach quantum advantage we know we need high performance qubits, and a lot of them. We’ve already designed and deployed a modular architecture, tiling multiple chips together demonstrating what we believe is the way forward towards building larger systems. We believe a densely connected square lattice with tunable couplers that allows us to control qubit interactions is the foundation for driving qubit performance. A 2.5x increase in error performance against our previous QPUs, increasing our fidelities by 3%, coupled with our scaling approach, shows us that we have a promising strategy for building increasingly higher performing QPUs to help our customers solve their most pressing problems,” says David Rivas, Rigetti CTO.

The public launch of the Ankaa-2 system follows the release of the Novera QPU, Rigett’s first commercially available QPU, which is based on the same Ankaa-class architecture and designed for hands-on access to state-of-the-art quantum hardware for foundational quantum computing R&D.

About Rigetti

Rigetti is a pioneer in full-stack quantum computing. The Company has operated quantum computers over the cloud since 2017 and serves global enterprise, government, and research clients through its Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services platform. The Company’s proprietary quantum-classical infrastructure provides high performance integration with public and private clouds for practical quantum computing. Rigetti has developed the industry’s first multi-chip quantum processor for scalable quantum computing systems. The Company designs and manufactures its chips in-house at Fab-1, the industry’s first dedicated and integrated quantum device manufacturing facility. Learn more at rigetti.com.

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Source: Rigetti