Northwestern University

New Capabilities

Pioneering commercial CMOS quantum photonics

Quantum computers can already outperform classical supercomputers on specific tasks. Google's Willow chip solved a problem in five minutes that would take today's fastest machines 10 septillion years, and in October 2025 demonstrated the first verifiable quantum advantage with its Quantum Echoes algorithm—13,000 times faster than supercomputers. But scaling from today's 100-qubit systems to the million-qubit machines needed for real-world applications requires control hardware that doesn't exist yet. Current laser control systems are tabletop-sized, power-hungry, and impossible to replicate thousands of times over.

Updated Dec 28, 2025