Amazon Web Services introduces Ocelot, its quantum computing chip

Amazon Web Services revealed its first quantum computing chip, Ocelot. The company said the chip’s design would help it build efficient hardware systems. The launch came after Microsoft launched its quantum chip, Majorana 1. 

Amazon Web Services introduced its first quantum computing chip, Ocelot, on Thursday. The company said the chip was designed to advance error correction and improve scalability for practical quantum computing. 

Amazon unveils its first quantum computing chip, Ocelot 

Amazon Web Services labeled its quantum computing chip as a step towards building practical quantum computers. It added that the chip could solve problems beyond the reach of conventional machines. 

The company revealed that the new quantum chip could reduce the cost implications of implementing quantum error correction by up to 90%. Amazon revealed it used a new design in the chip’s architecture. 

The company explained that it built error correction from the ground up using the “cat qubit.” It explained that the cat qubits suppressed specific forms of errors that would reduce the money spent on quantum error correction. AWS highlighted that for the first time, its researchers had combined the cat qubit technology with additional quantum error features on its microchip. It emphasized that the chip could be made scalable using processes borrowed from the microelectronics industry.

AWS director Oskar Painter commented that with the latest advancements in quantum research, quantum computers are expected to be available for real-world applications soon. The director noted that future quantum chips built using Ocelot’s design would cost less than the current approaches. 

He added that this was due to the reduced number of resources needed for error correction. Painter mentioned that he believed the chip would speed up their timeline to a practical quantum computer by up to five years. He added that the AWS approach could one day yield useful computers with only 100,000 qubits rather than a million.

The director explained that the chip’s real benefit is allowing them to provide five to ten times fewer physical qubits to implement the error correction in a fully scaled machine. Painter noted that the current chip was constructed using standard techniques borrowed from the chip industry with tantalum material. He added that the company partners hoped to customize the techniques further. 

Painter highlighted that innovation on the chip remained necessary and that it would speed up development timelines. He added that the underlying technology would be much simpler if improvements were made at the materials and processing level. 

Amazon’s head of quantum software applications, Fernando Brandao, commented that Ocelot architecture, with its hardware-efficient approach to error correction, positioned the company to tackle the next phase of quantum computing by learning how to scale. 

The company official added that scaling using hardware efficiency would allow the company to achieve an error-corrected quantum computer that would benefit society much quicker and more cost-effectively. 

Microsoft and Google launch their quantum computing chips 

Last week, Microsft introduced its Majorana 1 chip , which uses a new material: a topoconductor. The company reported the material took advantage of a new state of matter that was neither solid, liquid, nor gas. 

The company revealed that the quantum chip employed eight topological qubits using indium arsenide and aluminum. Microsoft noted that the difficulty in developing the right materials to create exotic particles is why most quantum efforts focus on other kinds of qubits.  

The company explained that understanding topological matter and applying it to build a quantum computing chip required Microsoft to build up atom by atom to get the materials. Krysta Svore, Microsoft’s technical fellow, commented that understanding the materials was hard, and that was why a quantum computer would be necessary to predict the materials with even better properties to build the next generation of quantum computers. 

Google also launched its quantum chip, Willow , in December 2024. The company said the chip could reduce errors as it scaled up using more qubits. It revealed the chip had performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take today’s fastest computers years to complete.

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