Amazon Web Services unveils Ocelot quantum computing chip after Google, Microsoft

Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) new Ocelot chip, developed by a team working at the California Institute of Technology, comprises two tiny squares of silicon stacked on top of each other. The name is a play on words, referring to oscillators, which generate periodic electric signals, including in the prototype hardware Amazon developed.

“Five years ago, I could have told you, ‘I think I could build a quantum computer and could build it practically,’” said Oskar Painter, head of quantum hardware at AWS. “Today I can say with confidence we are going to build a quantum computer.”

Bits, the foundational units of computing, store information represented by a one or a zero. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which reflect the probability of a one or a zero and can appear as both simultaneously. That makes quantum computers able to consider more possibilities exponentially faster than a traditional computer.