IBM’s Quantum Fab Anderon Aims to Be the TSMC Of Qubits

The U.S. Department of Commerce has finalized a CHIPS and Science Act R&D award of up to $1 billion for Anderon, a quantum foundry IBM established earlier this year. The 16 September announcement backs a manufacturing service for IBM and other quantum-hardware developers.

IBM is matching the award with $1 billion in cash and contributing intellectual property, assets, and skilled workers. Headquartered in Albany, N.Y., Anderon builds on an existing operation at Albany NanoTech, where IBM has made quantum wafers for more than five years, says CEO Mukesh Khare. That existing infrastructure has helped Anderon get started: Its first wafers are already moving through a production-scale, 300-millimeter line.

Quantum computing “is moving from science to real commercial impact now,” Khare says. “That means the industry also needs a more stable manufacturing source for building quantum chips.”

If Anderon is successful, it could do for quantum hardware what TSMC did for conventional chips: let companies focus on designing chips without each one having to build a multibillion-dollar factory for the underlying hardware.

What an Automated Quantum Fab Can Offer

IBM says shifting much of its quantum wafer R&D from the 200-millimeter fabrication lab at the IBM Research headquarters in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., to the Albany 300-millimeter line, beginning in 2021, doubled chip-development speed and increased its chips’ physical complexity tenfold. Round-the-clock processing shortened fabrication cycles, and advanced manufacturing techniques enabled more elaborate wiring and qubit connections. Anderon draws on Albany NanoTech’s manufacturing capability and IBM’s experience deploying more than 90 quantum systems since 2016. The challenge now is extending those capabilities to outside designers. Anderon’s potential customers include processor developers without fabs, system builders, and national laboratories. Even companies with their own manual chipmaking facilities may be interested in outsourcing fabrication to an automated foundry. Rigetti Computing, for example, another CHIPS Act R&D award winner, is in talks with Anderon, according to CEO Subodh Kulkarni.