Design of a Cryo-CMOS Smart Temperature Sensor

Quantum computers exploit the quantum behavior of quantum bits (qubits) that are typically operated at cryogenic temperature. Qubits require an electronic control interface. Nowadays, such classical electronic controllers use bulky instruments operated far fromthe qubits outside the cryostat. To run practical quantum algorithms, thousands to...

Cryogenic Digital CMOS Memories for Quantum Computing

Scalable universal quantum computers require classical control hardware, physically close to the quantum devices at cryogenic temperatures. Such classical controllers need digital memory for various applications, ranging from high-speed queues to high-speed and low-speed lookup tables and working memory. The power consumption of the memories...

Neural-Network Decoders for Quantum Error Correction Using Surface Codes: A Space Exploration of the Hardware Cost-Performance Tradeoffs

Quantum error correction (QEC) is required in quantum computers to mitigate the effect of errors on physical qubits. When adopting a QEC scheme based on surface codes, error decoding is the most computationally expensive task in the classical electronic back-end. Decoders employing neural networks (NN) are well-suited for this task but their...

CMOS circuits and systems for cryogenic control of silicon quantum processors

Quantum computers can provide exponential speedup in solving certain computational problems pertaining to drug discovery, cybersecurity, weather forecasting, etc. Although a quantum computer with just 50-qubits has been shown to surpass the computing power of the best supercomputers in specific applications, millions of qubits would be required...

Designing the Electronic Interface for Qubit Control

Quantum computers have gained widespread interest as they can potentially solve problems that are intractable even for today’s supercomputers, such as the simulation of quantum systems as initially proposed by Feynman. To achieve such tremendous progress, a quantum computer relies on processing the information stored in quantum bits (qubits),...

A 7-bit 1-GSa/s Cryo-CMOS ADC for Spin-Qubit Readout

Quantum computing offers exponential speed-up for problems that are computationally intractable with classical computing. However, quantum processors with thousands to millions of quantum bits (qubits) are needed. Room-temperature electronics are used to control and readout today's qubits operating at cryogenic temperature. As the number of...

Characterization and Modeling of Self-Heating in Nanometer Bulk-CMOS at Cryogenic Temperatures

This work presents a self-heating study of a 40-nm bulk-CMOS technology in the ambient temperature range from 300 K down to 4.2 K. A custom test chip was designed and fabricated for measuring both the temperature rise in the MOSFET channel and in the surrounding silicon substrate, using the gate resistance and silicon diodes as sensors,...

A Cryo-CMOS Digital Cell Library for Quantum Computing Applications

We present a digital cell library optimized for 4.2 K to create controllers that keep quantum processors coherent and entangled. The library, implemented on a standard 40-nm CMOS technology, was employed in the creation of the first 4.2 K RISC-V processor. It has achieved a minimum supply voltage of 590 mV, energy-delay product of 37 fJ/MHz,...

Design of CMOS Voltage References for Ultra-Wide Temperature Ranges

Voltage references are one of the fundamental building blocks for designing any analog processing circuit. It serves as a reference for Analog to Digital Converters (ADCs), Digital to Analog Converters (DACs), power/voltage regulators and other measurement and control circuits. The performance of all these circuits cannot be better than the...

Cryogenic electronics for the read-out of quantum processors

Quantum computing promises an exponential speed-up of computation compared to what is nowadays achievable with classical computers. In this way, it enables the evaluation of more complex models and the breaching of current security algorithms. For the operation of a quantum system, many questions remain to be answered. Currently, there are...

Characterization and Compact Modeling of Nanometer CMOS Transistors at Deep-Cryogenic Temperatures

Cryogenic characterization and modeling of two nanometer bulk CMOS technologies (0.16-μm and 40-nm) are presented in this paper. Several devices from both technologies were extensively characterized at temperatures of 4 K and below. Based on a detailed understanding of the device physics at deep-cryogenic temperatures, a compact...

Cryogenic CMOS LNA for RF readout of spin qubits

Quantum computation is bringing excitement and motivation into the scientific community to build a practical quantum computer. This would enable the solution of problems today intractable, thanks to the exponential decrease in the required number of operations with respect to a classical computer. Nevertheless, this extraordinary computer needs...

A versatile low-temperature setup for the electrical characterization of single-molecule junctions

We present a modular high-vacuum setup for the electrical characterization of single molecules down to liquid helium temperatures. The experimental design is based on microfabricated mechanically controllable break junctions, which offer control over the distance of two electrodes via the bending of a flexible substrate. The actuator part of the...