Kristiaan De Greve - imec

Scientific & Program Director Quantum Computing, imec

‘Quantum giveth and quantum taketh away’ – from quantum bits to quantum cryptography 
The development and road to maturity of quantum systems is one of the frontier R&D topics of the coming decade, with promising future applications in novel forms of special purpose computing, communication, and hyper performant sensing systems. Unlocking this long term promise, however, comes at an immediate cost: the cost of exponentially growing control complexity. Adding a single quantum bit (the fundamental building block of quantum technologies) doubles the complexity, making large scale quantum systems very hard to achieve. Overcoming this bottleneck requires better, lower-variability and higher-fidelity qubits that are easier to control and interface with. At imec, we are developing such one-of-a-kind qubits and control systems by building on the tremendous precision and accuracy allowed by advanced semiconductor tooling, thereby taking qubits truly from lab to fab. 

However, since quantum computers are expected to break modern-day cryptographic systems, the mere possibility of quantum computers tackling real life problems, even if only 10-15 years from now, triggers an immediate call to action in terms of cybersecurity. Fortunately, while quantum mechanics ‘taketh away’ from cybersecurity through its use in quantum computers – it also ‘giveth’ by allowing other, fundamentally unbreakable forms of communication protected by the quantum laws of nature, such as quantum communication. Such communication networks are currently being deployed across Europe and the world, and will, in conjunction with other, so-called ‘post-quantum’ cryptographic solutions, ensure future-proof, cyber-secure networks. We will discuss imec’s role in deploying such networks, their benchmarking, and the development of novel solutions that would drastically reduce the cost and increase the ease of adoption of the equipment involved.