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Introducing: A Motherboard for Quantum Computers

By Eric Michiels

As quantum systems scale up, high fidelity and high-speed qubit readout—without
bulky components—is a critical success factor. An IBM Research Team led by Baleegh
Abdo has demonstrated the proof-of-principle of a high-performance qubit readout
motherboard, free from the disturbances of hardware like circulators and isolators.

Reading out qubits is a huge challenge: stable superconducting qubits operate in a

dilution refrigerator at 15 mK, but must be reliably measured using room-temperature
electronics. In order to carry out measurement today, quantum computers employ
low-power microwave signals and then amplify those outgoing signals using Josephson
Parametric Amplifiers (JPAs) followed by High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT)
amplifiers—learn more about those here. However, the amplification chain comes with
bothersome noise, against which the qubits must be isolated. In state-of-the-art
systems, researchers solve these problems by incorporating additional microwave
devices at the 15 mK stage, such as circulators and isolators, which route readout
signals in a single direction, i.e., from input to output, and protect the qubits by
blocking some of the noise coming from the readout chain, respectively. While this
solution might enable high-fidelity qubit readout, the reliance on these large
microwave components introduces a scalability limitation—which is an issue when the
IBM Quantum team has their eyes set on a million-qubit quantum computer in the
coming decades. In short, qubit readout chains urgently require innovative
improvements.

“The challenge with the current technology is that we use commercial magnetic
isolators and circulators that do work well in cryogenic circumstances, but have the
disadvantage of being big in size, expensive, and heavy. If you have a lot of them,
because you would need to read out a lot of qubits, they will occupy a large volume in
our dilution fridges,” said Baleegh Abdo, Master Inventor and Research Staff Member
on the IBM Quantum team. Moreover, these isolators and circulators are magnetic,
which can have adverse effects on superconducting qubits, further requiring that the
quantum chips be placed inside magnetic shield cans, which inevitably degrade the
readout fidelity due to the separation they impose between the various components in
the readout chain.

Fortunately, a team of IBM Yorktown and Almaden, led by Abdo, are inventing new on-
chip devices to eliminate these big magnetic components. Josephson Directional
Amplifiers (JDA) amplify signals in only one direction, replacing the need for
combining circulators with JPAs, and Josephson Isolator (JIS) devices work to block
output noise in the microwave frequency band used for readout. Both of these
Josephson junction-based directional devices are compatible with superconducting
circuits, devoid of magnetic materials, and can be operated using a single microwave
drive or pump. They are constructed by using two Josephson Parametric Converters
(JPCs), a Josephson Junction-based amplifier. Josephson junctions are lossless,

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nonlinear inductors named after Brian David Josephson, a Welsh theoretical physicist;
If you want to learn more, check out this post.

“Our new solution uses technologies that allow for miniaturization while being
compatible with the superconducting qubit technology,” said Abdo.

The team envisioned creating a readout motherboard that combines these Josephson
Junction-based devices with other on-chip microwave components and wire bonding
them to the printed circuit board. And, indeed, at the 2020 American Physical Society
March Meeting, they successfully demonstrated the construction and testing of such a
motherboard.

However, since this motherboard was mainly a proof-of-concept, there’s still a

considerable amount of work left before it’s ready for incorporation into an IBM
Quantum device. Some of the questions which the team had to tackle are: How do we
improve its performance? How do we integrate it, and how do we facilitate its
packaging?

The team provided some possible answers to these important questions at this year's
APS March meeting (2021).

A first improvement that the team made to both the JIS and JDA devices was getting
rid of wire bonds. Leveraging IBM’s historical experience with bump bonds, the
researchers produced JIS and JDA devices that they bump bonded directly to the PCBs.
The bump bonds not only deliver incoming and outgoing signals, they also ground chip
ports, carry the chip mechanically (you can think of these bonds as “glue”) and
provide good impedance matching for broadband devices. The bump bond strategy is
not brand new—they found use in the Quantum Hummingbird Processor, although in
that case the quantum chip was not directly bump bonded to a PCB but to a silicon
interposer, which, in turn, was bump bonded to a PCB. A second improvement was
increasing the JPC frequency (that is used to build the JIS and JDA devices) to better
match the qubit readout frequency, requiring an update of the JPC design. Third, the
team increased the strength of the couplings of the JPCs to the intermediate
transmission line that is part of the JIS and JDA devices.

The tests showed great results: the JISs transmit signals in one direction with little
added loss of about 0.5 dB when they are on versus off, whereas they attenuate signals
in the opposite direction by more than 20 dB within a 10 MHz bandwidth.

“We get a Josephson Isolator that allows the signal to propagate in one direction… and
it blocks the signals that are propagating in the opposite direction. So, this is an
important component that protects the qubit against noise coming from the output
chain," said Abdo.

The JDA was also subject to improvements. In addition to being bump-bonded to the
PCB in a similar manner as the JIS, the research team developed another breakthrough
innovation: for the first time, they realized an on-chip 90-degree hybrid for the high-
frequency pump needed for amplification. This achievement was made possible due to
the use of the bump bonding providing good impedance matching for high frequency
components. The new JDA device is capable of amplifying signals by 18 dB in one
direction in a bandwidth of 3 MHz, whereas signals in the opposite direction are
slightly attenuated. Here also, the insertion loss is limited to approximately 1 dB.

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Core to these two directional devices is the JPC, a three-

wave lossless mixing device operating at the quantum
noise limit with two differential modes (often called “a”
and “b”) that couple to a Josephson Ring Modulator or
“JRM”. A JRM consists of four relatively large Josephson
Junctions assembled in a loop and shunted by linear
inductance. The differential modes are enabled by
coupling two orthogonal microwave resonators having
different resonance modes “a” and “b” to the JRM.

Apart from the differential modes, the JRM has a

common mode that is driven off-resonance by the pump,
which is a strong coherent microwave tone. The a-modes
of the two JPCs in the JIS and JDA devices are coupled
via a 90-dgree hybrid and the b-modes are coupled to an
intermediate transmission line and 50 Ohm terminations.
In the case of the JIS, the JPCs are operated in mixing or Schematic of a JDA

conversion mode, while in the case of the JDA, they are

operated in amplification mode. Please look at the illustration figures in the sidebar. In
short, JPCs which include the JRMs are used for building both the JIS and JDA devices,
but the assembled devices operate in different ways.

While all of these deliverables are a huge step

forward in the journey towards building a universal
fault tolerant quantum computer, further challenges
are on the horizon, such as reducing the size of the
motherboard and increasing the bandwidth of the
JPCs so the JDA and JIS can support frequency
multiplexed qubit readout. Multiplexing allows a
single set of readout circuitry to measure a large
number of qubits, which is key because the number
of high-coherent qubits in quantum processors is
expected to keep growing over the next years.

Abdo said: “In the long run, after we overcome both

of these technological and research challenges, we
believe we can use the motherboard device in much
larger systems than 1000 qubits. And with our team
we are currently designing JPCs that are more Schematic of a JIS

compact and have a larger bandwidth. We hope to

get some preliminary results in the coming months."

Solving these issues successfully is of critical importance to scaling superconducting

quantum hardware. Another interesting evolution is the possibility of moving from
aluminum to niobium junctions, when building these directional devices.

“Since our current JDA and JIS devices are based on aluminum junctions, they must be
tested and operated at temperatures much lower than 1 K. At some point, it would be
nice to build them using niobium junctions, which will make them more resilient, have
higher saturation power, and easier to test and characterize,” said Abdo.

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This is just one of a few solutions to tackle the challenge of scaling up and
miniaturizing superconducting quantum systems. IBM's team might converge on a
solution like the one that Abdo’s team is working on, i.e., a motherboard which
supports multiplexed qubit readout, which integrates multiple devices, or rely on
state-of-the-art research into other components as a potential alternative.

Ultimately, the IBM team will draw on the best available research in the field when it
comes to finding a solution to the problem of scaling up. As for the motherboard, down
the road, it is likely that it will also host extra functional components, just like the
classical version of the motherboard in our general-purpose computers of today.

Posted by Ryan Mandelbaum on June 03, 2021

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