Cambridge-based Riverlane, a quantum startup developing error detection technology, has been awarded a £2.1M European Innovation Council (EIC) Transition grant backed by the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT).

Quantum computers generate an immense volume of data, necessitating real-time processing to correct the inherent errors these machines encounter. Previous decoding approaches cannot keep up with this volume of data, creating a backlog problem that slows down and eventually stops the computation. This flood of data must be processed in real-time by sophisticated decoders, whose task is to identify the underlying errors and issue corrective measures. 

Building on Riverlane’s patented decoding technology, the prototype will extend the core functionalities to support streaming and adaptative decoding during a logical quantum operation. The prototype will be implemented on an FPGA and integrated into a quantum control system provided by the Dutch quantum computing scale-up ‘Qblox’. The integration ensures that the decoder prototype is compatible with existing solutions that may be present in different layers of a quantum computing system.

This grant will allow the development of a quantum error decoder capable of supporting the real-time decoding of quantum operations – a crucial step to achieving quantum advantage. This award elevates Riverlane’s total funding to £55m, having previously raised investments from leading venture capital firms and government-backed grants. 

To address this challenge, Riverlane has built ‘Deltaflow.Decode’, a core layer to our comprehensive ‘Quantum Error Correction Stack’. Deltaflow.Decode originated from the QuantERA ‘Quantum Code Design and Architecture’ project in 2018 – the first pan-European interdisciplinary project on codes and protocols for quantum error correction coordinated by Riverlane’s VP of Quantum Science, Dr. Earl Campbell. While Deltaflow.Decode already has the correct foundations for real-time decoding, through this EIC-funded project, Riverlane’s intends to complete the build of more sophisticated functionality capable of continuously decoding the errors that today’s quantum computers produce.

“The field of quantum error correction has gone from theory to practice with several landmark experiments in recent years demonstrating effective quantum error correction offline in software,” said Steve Brierley, CEO & Founder of Riverlane. 

“But for quantum computers to scale to the millions and ultimately trillions of reliable operations to solve problems beyond the capability of supercomputers, we need decoders that can detect and correct errors in real-time, meaning millions of times per second. As leading experts in quantum error correction, we are at the forefront of this and the support from Horizon Europe will help accelerate our plans to sooner get this technology into the hands of the quantum hardware companies that need it.”