It’s called a quantum cryoprober and in the world of exotic high-tech tools, this one that sits in a lab at Intel’s campus in Oregon is truly unique. Intel worked with the Finnish firms Bluefors and Afore to design and build the cryoprober.
No tool on Earth can do what it does. The cryoprober can plunge a 300-millimeter silicon wafer to the extraordinarily low temperature of 1.7 Kelvin!
Intel’s cryoprober is critical in the company’s ongoing quantum computing research. The promise of quantum computing is to tackle enormously complex problems that are beyond even the reach of today’s most powerful supercomputers. The cryoprober has dramatically sped up the rate at which Intel engineers can perfect new microscopic computing devices like spin qubits and quantum dots. The super-low temps are necessary because most of quantum computing devices only function in the extreme cold. Among other results, the cryoprober is helping researchers get closer to creating large arrays of qubits.
