ESCHER: Establishing Supply Chains for Emergent Quantum Computers

A primary goal of the UK National Quantum Technology Programme is to target key milestones on the journey to practical, universal quantum computing. The partners of this project are working together to develop commercial supply chains for key components, subsystems and devices for emergent quantum computing and networking platforms. The proposed project complements the work programme for the national hub in Networked Quantum Information Technologies (NQIT) by developing the industrial role in the efforts of the national programme. The planned developments will help the industrial partners establish a native supply chain for critical components in the roadmap for the Q20:20 engine and beyond. The envisaged impact of fault tolerant quantum computing will have global significance and strengthening the UK's industrial participation in this area and at this stage will ensure that researchers benefit from hardware capable of accelerating their own work. This value proposition will enable the companies to benefit immediately.

The Sussex team will focus on the development of a stable, low-noise DC electronics system for addressing scalable ion trap microchips which form part of individual quantum computer modules. The team developed the specifications for the DC system and has developed significant expertise in the development of low-noise DC supplies which will be shared with the project lead MSquared Lasers. Such electronics will form one of the components for a trapped ion quantum computer prototype and as such will form an important part of the supply chain for quantum computing. The team is in the process of
constructing a quantum computer prototype at the University of Sussex with the explicit aim to commercialize the full range of technologies involved. The team has recently published the first practical blueprint for the construction of a universal quantum computer which identifies the electronics developed here as one of the key components.

The impacts of the project will be wide reaching from the outset and will support the establishment of an entirely new industry over the next decade with major economic benefits both up- and downstream. The importance of the establishing supply chains within the UK economy at an early stage in the sector's life cycle is anticipated to be of critical importance to the nation's economic competitiveness in the coming decades. The planned work will help accelerate investment and foster an ecosystem that will be a major contributor to the overall competitiveness of, not only the native quantum computing field,
but also the myriad of industries that are well positioned to benefit from future developments. With >30% CAGR the scale of investment and opportunity is extensive. Currently the North American share of this market and the associated supply chains is 49%, whilst the Asia-Pacific region is projected to grow rapidly as the technology and markets mature. The risk for the UK sector is to be left behind or become reliant on imports of critical components and subsystems. This would hinder the development and adoption of UK-built quantum computing technologies. Reinforcing the native supply for systems and
applications will increase the impact of the sector on the anticipated outcomes in healthcare, finance, logistics and industrial process optimisation. As a current supplier to the research sector working on quantum computing the project leader MSquared lasers has a range of preferred local suppliers of raw materials and components, who stand to benefit from the proposed supply chain developments. This will have spill over effects for job creation and security for the suppliers and the local economies within which they are situated. To calibrate the external economic benefits we can evaluate the impact along the value chains that will emerge from the project. The supply chains for the commercial partners' operations,
including raw material, components & electronics will see an additional ~4 jobs created upstream from the consortium over 5 years, around 90% of which are UK-based. The establishment of a strong UK supply chain in this area will strengthen the native expertise in this area whilst systems based on components from preferred local suppliers will drive efficiency in the value chain. Downstream value creation will begin with research usage but soon gain wider reach as outputs are deployed widely within quantum computing and quantum information processing. There are a myriad of social benefits that practical quantum computing could enable over the next decades. The prospects for quantum simulations could be significant for a variety of fields including research-intensive pharmaceutical development. The Tufts Centre for the Study of Drug Development calculates that the average cost of delivering a new drug to the approval stage is $2.6b. This represents a 145% increase on a decade earlier. The opportunity to drastically reduce this figure through complex simulation and reduction of the need for physical development of substances with a high failure rate will have substantial impact.