Tower Semiconductor and Xanadu Partner on Quantum Stack
Tower Semiconductor and Xanadu are partnering to industrialize a silicon photonic quantum stack. The collaboration aims to create manufacturable, fault-tolerant platforms for scalable quantum computing. This effort is expected to inform ITU and IEC working groups that are defining standards for quantum infrastructure.
- Xanadu, a Toronto-based company, is developing photonic quantum computers that operate at room temperature, using light particles as qubits; this approach avoids the extreme cryogenic cooling required by many competing quantum modalities. - The partnership centers on Tower Semiconductor's established high-volume silicon photonics (SiPho) manufacturing platform, aiming to optimize key components such as ultra-low loss silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides and integrated photodiodes. - This expanded collaboration builds on previous successes, including a series of joint "tapeouts" where Xanadu's photonic circuit designs were tested and refined on Tower's production flows, leading to a co-engineered custom material stack. - Xanadu's long-term public roadmap targets the construction of a million-physical-qubit, fault-tolerant quantum computing data center by 2029. - This effort to create manufacturable quantum components is directly relevant to standardization bodies like the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1), which is developing standards for quantum computing terminology and vocabulary (ISO/IEC 4879). - Xanadu’s technical path is validated by its advancement to Stage B of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, a program designed to assess credible roadmaps toward utility-scale quantum computing. - Beyond hardware, Xanadu leads the development of PennyLane, a widely adopted open-source software library for quantum machine learning, aiming to build a full-stack ecosystem. - The choice of silicon photonics reflects a broader industry trend toward using established semiconductor manufacturing techniques for quantum scalability, a strategy also being pursued by competitors like PsiQuantum in partnership with GlobalFoundries.
