This is your Advanced Quantum Deep Dives podcast.I’m Leo, your Learning Enhanced Operator, and today I’m broadcasting from a lab humming at 10 millikelvin, where every wire crackles with possibility.This week at CES in Las Vegas, D-Wave and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab stole headlines by showing scalable on-chip cryogenic control for fluxonium qubits – a clever way to move the “steering wheel” of a quantum computer into the freezer with the qubits themselves. According to D-Wave’s announcement, they’re now controlling many qubits with a tiny fraction of the wiring, turning what used to be a jungle of coax cables into something closer to a neat superconducting nervous system.But the paper that grabbed my attention today came from a very different angle: energy. On arXiv, a team released “Energetics of Rydberg-atom Quantum Computing.” They didn’t ask the usual “How many qubits?” or “What’s the fidelity?” They asked, “How much energy does a quantum algorithm actually cost?”Picture a lattice of neutral atoms, each held in place by laser tweezers, shimmering like a microscopic city seen from orbit. When we excite those atoms into Rydberg states, their electrons balloon outward, turning each atom into an oversized antenna that feels its neighbors. That’s how we build multi-qubit gates: by letting those swollen atoms push and pull on each other through strong dipole interactions.The authors took two workhorse algorithms — the quantum Fourier transform and phase estimation — and mapped every operation onto a realistic Rydberg machine. Then they tallied the energy bill: laser pulses, trap light, control fields, all of it. They didn’t just count gate depth; they counted joules.Here’s the surprising fact: under some conditions, the dominant energy cost isn’t the fancy entangling gates at all. It’s the “background” — the continuous power just to keep the atoms trapped, cooled, and ready. The quantum choreography is almost delicate; the stage lighting eats the budget.Now connect that to today’s news. D-Wave’s on-chip cryogenic control is also, fundamentally, an energy story. By bringing control electronics into the cryostat and using multiplexed DACs, they cut wiring, reduce heat leaks, and shrink the cryogenic footprint. Less heat into the fridge means less energy burned hauling the system down to near absolute zero.In other words, from neutral atoms in optical lattices to fluxonium chips bonded at JPL, the frontier is shifting: quantum advantage must come with energy advantage, or it won’t scale into the real world of data centers and climate-constrained grids.Thanks for listening, and if you ever have questions or topics you want discussed on air, send an email to [email protected]. Don’t forget to subscribe to Advanced Quantum Deep Dives. This has been a Quiet Please Production; for more information, check out quiet please dot AI.For more http://www.quietplease.aiGet the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOtaThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

Ver todos los episodios