ETH Zurich's Yiwen Chu and colleagues have demonstrated a quantum-computing architecture that separates processing from memory. A superconducting transmon qubit controls operations while vibrations in an acoustic resonator store quantum states. The team implemented a universal set of quantum gates and ran examples of the quantum Fourier transform and period-finding algorithms on the hybrid device.
Mechanical modes offer compact storage and preserve states during pauses in a computation. The experiment shows that the memory can participate in complete algorithms, rather than simply hold a state. The number of accessible modes currently limits the demonstration; the group is working to improve coherence and accelerate readout as it develops larger systems.
