Photonic quantum computers may end up being built on the same wafer lines as conventional chips, and a French company is shopping for a foundry partner in South Korea to prove it.
Quandela chief executive Niccolo Somaschi used a Seoul press conference to say he is talking to the country’s memory and logic makers, naming Samsung and SK hynix as candidates. He described the fit between Korean wafer processing and his company’s optical designs, and said he wants an ally rather than a single order.
Quandela’s architecture mixes III-V compound semiconductors with photonic integrated circuits, which is what allows quantum parts to ride standard processes. The company has also worked with Nvidia on shuttling work between a quantum processing unit and a graphics processor.
Three tracks are on the table: fabricating the quantum die, cryogenic control and system integration, and the software stack above both. Somaschi set a two-year horizon for picking partners and checking whether photonic modules can be built at volume.
A consortium of Korean firms and research institutes is also under discussion, with an intellectual property split that keeps pre-existing technology with its owner while leaving room for jointly held results.
The company was spun out of a French national research institute in 2017 and began shipping systems the following year.
