Idle qubit ion
Ion pair mid-gate
Active trap electrode
Scroll to zoom · drag to pan
Trapped-ion quantum computers do not scale by growing one long ion chain — beyond a handful of qubits, addressing and cooling a single crowded chain becomes impractical. Instead, commercial architectures from IonQ and Quantinuum use the QCCD design: qubits idle in small groups in separate memory zones on a segmented linear trap, and a moving DC potential — shifted electrode by electrode, exactly like a charge-coupled device shift register — physically carries selected ions into a shared gate zone to perform a two-qubit gate before shuttling them home. This 2D schematic renders that segmented trap from the side: pick how many memory zones feed the gate zone, tune how fast ions are shuttled, and watch the resulting motional heating (and its cost to gate fidelity) update live, along with sympathetic cooling pulling it back down between shuttles. Scroll to zoom and drag to pan along the trap axis for a close look at any zone.