Intel (INTC) Rolls out Latest Horse Ridge Chips: Key Takeaways

Intel Corporation INTC recently rolled out the second generation of Horse Ridge cryogenic control chips (Horse Ridge II). The company made the announcement at the Intel Labs event held on Dec 3.

Horse Ridge II chips are aimed at to boosting quantum computing scalability. The second generation of Horse Ridge chips constitute two additional features compared with its predecessor. These functionalities improve the integration between external electronic controls and the SoC (or system-on-chip) inside the cryogenic refrigerator

In December 2019, Intel introduced its Horse Ridge cryogenic control chips to commercialize quantum computing. These chips are based on Intel’s 22nm low-power FinFET technology.

Intel Corporation Price and Consensus

Intel Corporation Price and Consensus
Intel Corporation Price and Consensus

Intel Corporation price-consensus-chart | Intel Corporation Quote

A Look at Additional Functionalities of Horse Ridge II

Horse Ridge II has the “Qubit readout” feature that enables the reading of current qubit state. Per Intel, the readout is important as it eliminates the need to store vast amount of data for facilitating “on-chip, low-latency qubit state detection.” This, in turn, saves both memory and power.

Horse Ridge II also features “Multigate pulsing” functionality that allows to control the potential of several qubit gates simultaneously. This leads to improved qubit readouts as well as the entanglement and operation of multiple qubits. This offers more scalability, added the chipmaker.

Presently, quantum systems are using “room temperature electronics” with too many coaxial cables connected to qubit chip within a dilution refrigerator and this impedes increases in scalability due to higher costs and power consumption, per Intel.

To overcome this problem, Horse Ridge chips use highly-integrated SoC along with advanced signal processing in place of bulky wiring set up. This enhances qubit performance and reduces the set-up time, which facilitates the quantum computer system to competently scale to larger qubit counts.

Horse Ridge chips are designed to work at cryogenic temperatures of around 4 Kelvin. Intel further stated that it is working on silicon spin qubits to enable these to work at a temperature of 1 kelvin or higher. This will slash substantial costs associated with refrigeration required for quantum systems.

Opportunities Galore

The quantum computing market is projected to witness a CAGR of 56% between 2020 and 2030, per a report available from ResearchAndMarkets.

The increased worldwide spending on quantum computing led by government and academia institution funding is expected to drive the market and enable mainstream adoption of the technology.

The latest Horse Ridge chips emphasize Intel’s investments to democratize and commercialize quantum computing. In August 2020, Intel had partnered with Argonne National Laboratory to speed up quantum computing research.

Tech companies like Intel are working with scientists and research centers to develop quantum computer scalability to address intricate issues that advanced supercomputers are not able to solve, currently.

However, competition has intensified in this space, given the alluring revenue growth prospects.

All the tech majors including IBM Corp. IBM, Microsoft MSFT and Amazon AMZN and Alphabet are ramping up their initiatives in advancing quantum computing technology to grab a larger share of this market.

Currently, Intel carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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