A British business has built what it describes as one of the world’s smallest quantum computers.

Orca Computing told the BBC that its novel approach will make quantum computing more commercially viable.

The company was established two years ago by Oxford academics and led by Professor Ian Walmsley.

The report said that most of the big players in the market use a technique in which qubits – the basic unit for quantum information – are frozen down to near absolute zero. This results in large, expensive machines.

"We're completely changing the way people view quantum computers,” said Richard Murray, the company’s chief executive, in an interview with the news broadcaster. "Firstly, it's not cryogenically cooled, it's all at room temperature.

"And you'll also see it looks a lot like a normal computer would - it's a rack-mounted system, it looks very unspecialist. Our approach uses single photons, so single units of light. And the great thing about single photons is that they don't interfere with the outside environment."

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