Xanadu Borealis

Xanadu Borealis is a photonic quantum computer operated by Xanadu in Canada. It has 216 physical qubits. It ranks 1 of 4 photonic machines in this table by physical qubit count. 8 sourced specs are in the spec sheet. 1 published benchmark or milestone record are listed below, each marked by who measured it.

Borealis is a programmable photonic sampler that Xanadu made available through Xanadu Cloud and Amazon Braket in June 2022. It is a special-purpose Gaussian boson sampling machine, not a universal gate-based computer, and the 216 figure counts squeezed-state modes (described by Xanadu as qubits). Xanadu claimed a 36 microsecond sample versus about 9,000 years for the best classical method, and reports the work in Nature. A Xanadu staff reply on the PennyLane forum dated 15 August 2023 says Borealis has been retired and is no longer available on the cloud, so the retirement month is the latest date it is known to have been withdrawn.

Spec sheet

Technical details as the builder or a paper states them, each with its own source. A blank is a fact we could not source, not a zero. Fidelity and coherence figures are in the benchmark table below.

Spec	Value	Basis	Note	Source
Processor	Borealis programmable time-multiplexed photonic processor	Peer reviewed	Nature paper describes one pulsed OPO feeding three programmable loop-based interferometers; 216 modes are sampled in about 36 microseconds.	nature.com aws.amazon.com
Qubit type	Pulsed single-mode squeezed vacuum states in time-bin modes (qumodes)	Peer reviewed	The OPO emits squeezed pulses at a 6 MHz rate; Xanadu's press release calls the 216 modes squeezed-state qubits, the Nature paper calls them modes.	nature.com prnewswire.com
Topology	Three fibre loops with delays of 1, 6 and 36 time bins, giving 3D connectivity across 216 modes	Peer reviewed	Each mode can interfere with temporally adjacent modes and with modes 6 and 36 time bins away; one time bin is about 167 ns (6 MHz clock).	nature.com aws.amazon.com
Native gates	Programmable variable beamsplitters and phase shifters, then photon-number-resolving readout	Peer reviewed	Each loop holds a variable beamsplitter with a programmable phase shifter; output goes through a 1-to-16 switch tree to TES detectors (95 percent detection efficiency).	nature.com
Software	Strawberry Fields; Amazon Braket SDK Strawberry Fields plugin	Independent	AWS blog says customers program Borealis through Strawberry Fields and the Braket plugin; the device ARN was in us-east-1.	aws.amazon.com
Cloud platforms	Xanadu Cloud; Amazon Braket (US East). Historical, no longer offered	Vendor reported	Launched June 2022 on both services; Xanadu staff said in Aug 2023 it was retired from the cloud, and the Braket device list fetched Oct 2026 has no Xanadu device.	prnewswire.com aws.amazon.com
Access and pricing	Was pay-as-you-go cloud access on Amazon Braket; retired from Xanadu Cloud by Aug 2023	Vendor reported	Forum reply from Xanadu staff dated 15 Aug 2023 says Borealis is retired; AWS described pay-as-you-go billing at launch but the sources give no price; the current Braket developer guide device list (docs.aws.amazon.com, braket-devices page) lists no Xanadu QPU.	discuss.pennylane.ai aws.amazon.com
Successor	Xanadu Aurora	Vendor reported	Xanadu presents Aurora as building on its earlier X8 and Borealis platforms, but Aurora is a different architecture (GKP qubits, fibre-networked modules), not a Borealis upgrade.	thequantuminsider.com sec.gov

Milestone claims

Xanadu: Gaussian boson sampling with 216 squeezed modes in 36 us vs ~9,000 years classical; claim of computational advantage (2022-06, vendor reported) prnewswire.com

Timeline

2022-06-01: Announced
2022-06: First operational
2023-08: Retired

Comparable photonic machines

Closest in physical qubit count within the same technology. Counts of different qubit types are not interchangeable across technologies.

Machine	Operator	Qubits	Status
Lucy	CEA	12	operational
Xanadu Aurora	Xanadu	12	operational
Quandela Belenos	Quandela	12	operational