A multinational team have built a quantum computer inside a diamond. The computer/diamond chip measures 1 mm x 1 mm. This computer may represent the future of quantum computing and is smaller than previously built quantum computers. The diamond quantum computer system features two quantum bits of subatomic particles.

A diamond helps quantum computing technology overcome a process known as disruptive decoherence and protects quantum calculations from environmental interference.

Unlike diamonds used for the jewelry industry, the diamond used by researchers had a lot of impurities, which were useful to the team. The impurities themselves became the quantum bits.

The team included University of Southern California professors and post doctoral researchers, a University of California, Santa Barbara, physicist, and researchers from the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The group was led by a U.S. Department of Energy Ames Laboratory physicist. The findings are published in the prestigious science journal, Nature.

Quantum bits can simultaneously encode to a one and a zero, which paves the way for much faster computing systems in the future—traditional computer bits can only encode a one or a zero at a given time. Researchers say that the benefits of the computer’s solid-state design makes it easier to upscale than previous attempts that used liquid- or gas-based systems.