Quantum Unified Basic Engine

The Quantum Unified Basic Engine, or QUBE, is a self contained computational unit with one qubit of memory. Designed and developed on Dione, QUBEs can compute at room temperature and are theoretically infinitely scalable by chaining more QUBEs together. QUBEs have become the standard computational unit for quantum computing.

Unlike previous quantum computers, QUBEs can compute at room temperature, albeit extremely inefficiently. A single QUBE by itself is fairly weak compared to traditional computers, but their strength lies in their modularity. QUBEs can be chained together into arrays, increasing the quantum memory by one qubit with each unit. The largest array is located on Luna at the Lunar Artificial Intelligence Supercomputing Laboratory with 10,000 QUBEs arranged in groups of 1000.

Producing QUBEs requires machinery with perfect precision at atomic scales. Slight flaws in the manufacturing will result in quantum decoherence, rendering the unit useless for any operations. The moon Dione is the major source of QUBEs, capable of producing a hundred a day at normal rates. The entire surface of the moon is covered in production facilities, with machinery and laboratories reaching far below the crust. Other production facilities in The Crucible and around Sol are also capable of producing QUBEs at a much lower rate.

Due to the nature of quantum computing, QUBEs have a non-zero chance to decohere during operation and must be replaced by a new one. On average, QUBEs can operate for about a year before decohering. After decoherence, the entire unit is useless and must be recycled or destroyed.

QUBEs are pivotal in research and developing new technologies. The most prevalent case is the development of Krasnikov Gates, which required decades of QUBE runtime. Most QUBEs are allocated towards increasing CYNTHIA’s computational power.