The main ambition of ARCTIC is to pursue large scale deployment of cryogenics in ICT applications, with special focus on developing solutions for controlling and interfacing scaled-up quantum computers. Quantum technologies will disrupt the ICT, but it is just the tip of the iceberg of cryo-enabled applications. European players broadly share this vision and with the 23 industrial (14 SMEs), 7 RTO and 6 academic partners in the ARCTIC project, we take the joint European step towards the era of cryogenic classical and quantum microsystems.

This project particularly aims to close an important gap: whereas research on qubits is long established, developing the control machinery is at least as important for scaled systems, yet is still in its infancy. The goal of ARCTIC is to bridge this void and develop scalable, reliable, innovative control infrastructure for cryogenic quantum processors. The (cryogenic) technologies under development in ARCTIC will also have applications in several different fields from sensing to communication and will therefore lead to important cross-fertilization that will strengthen the forming European ecosystem on cryogenic classical and quantum microsystems.

ARCTIC intends to establish a complete and comprehensive European supply chain for cryogenic photonics, microelectronics, and, in general, cryo-microsystems around the emerging quantum computing industry and different cryo-enabled ICT applications.