Ardent Concepts, Inc. Releases High-Density Ganged Coaxial Attenuators to Support Scale-up of Cryogenic and Quantum Computing Applications
Amphenol Ardent Concepts, a leading supplier of ganged coaxial connectors for use in cryogenic environments, has released high-density ganged coaxial attenuators for in-line use with the TR Multicoax™ series to support the many unique challenges of scaling up quantum computing applications for practical use. Density, substantial environmental changes, and an increasing need for more high-speed lanes are causing quantum computer designers to rethink traditional routing methods. By utilizing industry-leading materials like oxygen-free high thermal conductivity, copper and NiCr on thermally conductive crystalline quartz dielectric, engineers will be able to drastically decrease real estate required by individual attenuators with minimal change in attenuation to temperature delta down to 3 milliKelvin.
Attenuation is offered in 0, 10 and 20 dB configurations and supports bandwidth up to 12 GHz. All configurations offer well controlled insertion loss at 5 GHz of ±1 dB. The initial 16-channel form factor is 94% more compact than 16 traditional SMA-style attenuators and fits in a 290mm² area, compared to nearly 5000mm² for legacy attenuators with torque wrench provisions at the same channel count. Ardent plans to introduce additional form factors as needed. The tandem of TR Multicoax connectors and ganged coaxial attenuators provides system developers a total solution from room temperature to Quantum IC.
Traditionally, the control and read out lines in cryogenic dilution refrigerators are deployed in a massively parallel configuration using traditional coaxial cables as the transmission line media. As quantum computing begins to solidify its technical advantage over classical computing, it does so with the need for higher and higher numbers of qubits. The increase in qubits requires the coaxial cabling solutions to become denser as the hardware designers battle mechanical space requirements and balance the delicate cooling constraints of the cryogenic dilution refrigerators. This presents routing challenges due to the extremely high channel counts and concerns over connector transition failures and many cutting-edge quantum computing developers have turned to Ardent’s TR Multicoax product family to help.
“We saw this as an opportunity to help customers working on quantum computing and other cryogenic applications address the inherent challenges of routing signals in such a confined space and at extreme temperature changes. The robustness of our ganged coaxial attenuator combined with its high-density, high-bandwidth and solderless design made it an ideal solution,” said Stephen Cristaldi, Ardent Product Manager of High-Speed Cable Products. “Pair this ganged coaxial attenuator with TR Multicoax connectors, and system designers can connect hundreds of lines in a matter of minutes with confidence that all lanes will be functional down to milliKelvin temps.”