Introducing The Quantum Infrastructure Cloud Learn more

Our product · Quantum control and metrology

SoftQuantus NIO-Q

A 19-inch, 2U instrument for controlling and measuring quantum devices, independent of the qubit technology behind it. Planned for 2027.

Talk to the team See the roadmap
Concept render of a 2U rack unit whose front panel reads NIO-Q, Quantum Control and Metrology, with Power, Sync and Status lights.
Concept render of the planned unit. The surrounding rack equipment is illustrative.

What it is for

Control, measure and tune, in one instrument.

Control

  • Pulse design
  • Synchronisation and timing
  • An interface across qubit platforms

Measurement

  • Qubit state readout
  • Noise characterisation
  • System validation

Optimisation

  • Calibration automation
  • Performance references
  • Workflows that do not depend on one platform

Where it sits

The host orchestrates. The instrument controls.

QCOS is software on the host and does not drive qubits. Real-time control belongs on dedicated electronics next to the device. NIO-Q is SoftQuantus’s own product for that second place.

  1. Your experiment

    The people, code and procedures that decide what to run.

  2. Host software

    Plans, orchestrates and keeps the record.

  3. NIO-Q

    Generates, times and measures, next to the device.

  4. Quantum device

    Whichever qubit technology you work with.

What we are building towards

Five design goals.

Hardware agnostic
One instrument category and one way of working across different qubit technologies.
Precision metrology
Measurement treated as a first-class job of the instrument, not an afterthought of control.
Accelerated development
Less time building a bespoke control rack, more time on the device under test.
Reliable and auditable
Designed so a measurement can be kept with its context and checked later.
Lab to production
Designed for the path from a laboratory bench to an operated system.

Target platforms

Not tied to one kind of qubit.

The open stages of a dilution refrigerator in a laboratory.
Superconducting
A trap chip on a gold-plated carrier with fine wire bonds.
Trapped ion
Optics and lasers mounted on a breadboard in a dark laboratory.
Neutral atoms
Gloved hands aligning optics under red and blue light.
Photonics
A square chip in a gold-rimmed package, seen from above.
NV centres

The plan

From one instrument to an ecosystem.

  1. 2027

    Hardware

    Planned launch of the instrument.

  2. 2028–29

    Platform

    Planned scale-up across qubit platforms.

  3. 2030+

    Ecosystem

    Planned growth beyond a single instrument.

Building or running a quantum device?

Tell us what you control and measure today, and what slows it down.

Talk to the team How the stack fits together

The plan, the design goals and the appearance of the unit may change. Photographs, cropped and recompressed: FMNLab and IFREMER / Gregory Rocher (CC BY 4.0), UCL Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CC BY 2.0), QuEra Computing, Inc. (CC BY 4.0), AFRL / U.S. Air Force, Keith C Lewis, NIST and NASA/JPL-Caltech (public domain). None shows SoftQuantus hardware, the people shown are not SoftQuantus staff, and no partnership or endorsement is implied.