Photonic quantum startup QuiX Quantum has unveiled its Photonic Assembly Control Unit (PACU), a rack-mountable control unit designed to standardize the control layer of the company’s photonic systems.

In a statement, QuiX said the unit has been designed to reduce operational complexity in large-scale systems by supporting the modularity and serviceability requirements outside of laboratory environments.

The PACU comes in a 3U, 19-inch rack-mounted design, offering Ethernet and USB connectivity, E2000 optical connectors, and air cooling and individual tunable-element control. QuiX said the control unit supports up to 1,000 low-speed phase shifters and up to 32 high-speed phase shifters, all of which can be updated in less than two milliseconds.

QuiX said its PACU improves “reproducibility, maintenance, and replacement workflows,” and by allowing photonic assemblies to be connected through board-to-board connectors rather than flat cables, it creates a more resilient interface as it supports hot-swapping.

“As photonic quantum chips become more capable, the systems around them must scale as well,” said Stefan Hengesbach, CEO of QuiX Quantum. “PACU gives us a common control architecture across our photonic platform. It is designed to make our systems more modular, maintainable, and ready for integration into larger quantum computing environments.”

Founded in Enschede, the Netherlands, in 2019, the company’s systems are comprised of silicon nitride photonic chips that can operate in data center and HPC environments.

In 2022, QuiX sold both eight-qubit and 64-qubit photonic quantum computers to the German Aerospace Center (DLR QCI), and in 2024, began offering cloud access to its quantum systems. QuiX closed a €15 million ($17.5m) Series A funding round in July 2025.