Quantum battle: Amazon bets big on ‘cat qubits’ with new chip, claims it could cut costs by one-fifth

Joining the quantum race, Amazon Web Services (AWS) on February 27 introduced Ocelot, a quantum computing chip designed to accelerate the development of fault-tolerant quantum computers. The company claims Ocelot’s breakthrough technology could shave up to five years off the timeline for building commercially useful quantum systems.  

Developed at the AWS Center for Quantum Computing at Caltech, Ocelot reduces the cost of quantum error correction by as much as 90% compared to existing methods. Error correction is a major hurdle in quantum computing, as qubits — unlike classical bits — are prone to errors due to their fragile nature.  

AWS tackled this challenge by designing Ocelot with built-in error correction, leveraging cat qubits — a concept inspired by Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment. Cat qubits naturally suppress certain types of errors, requiring fewer resources for correction. AWS researchers have now integrated cat qubits with additional error correction components onto a scalable microchip, borrowing techniques from the microelectronics industry.  

“With the recent advancements in quantum research, it is no longer a matter of if, but when practical, fault-tolerant quantum computers will be available for real-world applications. Ocelot is an important step on that journey,” said Oskar Painter, AWS director of Quantum Hardware. “In the future, quantum chips built according to the Ocelot architecture could cost as little as one-fifth of current approaches, due to the drastically reduced number of resources required for error correction. Concretely, we believe this will accelerate our timeline to a practical quantum computer by up to five years.”  

AWS researchers have published their findings in Nature, marking a significant step toward scalable quantum computing.  

Amazon’s announcement comes just a week after Microsoft introduced its own quantum chip, Majorana 1, which is designed for potential scalability to a million qubits.  

Qubits, the fundamental units of quantum computers, differ from classical bits by leveraging superposition, allowing them to exist in multiple states simultaneously. This property gives quantum computers the potential to solve complex problems far beyond the capabilities of traditional machines.  

With Ocelot, AWS is betting on a new approach to accelerate the race toward practical quantum computing.