The International Business Machines Corporation, nicknamed Big Blue, is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York and is present in over 175 countries.
IBM is known for its hardware and software products, including computers, servers, storage systems and networking equipment. It also provides consulting, technology and business services, such as cloud computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).
IBM has unveiled the first quantum computer with more than 1,000 qubits — the equivalent of the digital bits in an ordinary computer. But the company says it will now shift gears and focus on making its machines more error-resistant rather than larger.
For years, IBM has been following a quantum-computing road map that roughly doubled the number of qubits every year. The chip unveiled on 4 December, called Condor, has 1,121 superconducting qubits arranged in a honeycomb pattern. It follows on from its other record-setting, bird-named machines, including a 127-qubit chip in 2021 and a 433-qubit one last year.
Quantum computers promise to perform certain computations that are beyond the reach of classical computers. They will do so by exploiting uniquely quantum phenomena such as entanglement and superposition, which allow multiple qubits to exist in multiple collective states at once.
But these quantum states are also notoriously fickle, and prone to error. Physicists have tried to get around this by coaxing several physical qubits — each encoded in a superconducting circuit, say, or an individual ion — to work together to represent one qubit of information, or ‘logical qubit’.
As part of its new tack, the company also unveiled a chip called Heron that has 133 qubits, but with a record-low error rate, three times lower than that of its previous quantum processor.
Researchers have generally said that state-of-the-art error-correction techniques will require more than 1,000 physical qubits for each logical qubit. A machine that can do useful computations would then need to have millions of physical qubits.
But in recent months, physicists have grown excited about an alternative error-correction scheme called quantum low-density parity check (qLDPC). It promises to cut that number by a factor of 10 or more, according to a preprint by IBM researchers. The company says it will now focus on building chips designed to hold a few qLDPC-corrected qubits in just 400 or so physical qubits, and then networking those chips together.
The IBM preprint is “excellent theoretical work”, says Mikhail Lukin, a physicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “That being said, implementing this approach with superconducting qubits seem to be extremely challenging and it will likely take years before even a proof-of-concept experiment can be tried in this platform,” Lukin says. Lukin and his collaborators conducted similar study on the prospect to implement qLDPC using individual atoms instead of superconducting loops.
The catch is that the qLDPC technique requires each qubit to be directly connected to at least six others. In typical superconducting chips, each qubit is connected only to two or three neighbours. But Oliver Dial, a condensed-matter physicist and chief technology officer of IBM Quantum, at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, says that the company has a plan: it will add a layer to the design of its quantum chips, to allow the extra connections required by the qLDPC scheme.
A new IBM road map on the its quantum research unveiled today sees it reaching useful computations — such as simulating the workings of catalyst molecules — by decade’s end. “It’s always been the dream, and it’s always been a distant dream,” says Dial. “Actually having it come close enough that we can see the path from where we are today for me is enormous.”
Breaking the 1,000-qubit barrier with Condor
We have introduced IBM Condor, a 1,121 superconducting qubit quantum processor based on our cross-resonance gate technology. Condor pushes the limits of scale and yield in chip design with a 50% increase in qubit density, advances in qubit fabrication and laminate size, and includes over a mile of high-density cryogenic flex IO wiring within a single dilution refigerator. With performance comparable to our previous 433-qubit Osprey, it serves as an innovation milestone, solving scale and informing future hardware design.
Access to the highest performing quantum processor: Heron
Building on four years of research, we introduced the first IBM Quantum Heron processor on the ibm_torino quantum system. Featuring 133 fixed-frequency qubits with tunable couplers, Heron yields a 3-5x improvement in device performance over our previous flagship 127-qubit Eagle processors, and virtually eliminates cross-talk. With Heron, we have developed a qubit and the gate technology that we’re confident will form the foundation of our hardware roadmap going forward.
IBM Quantum System Two: The system for a decade of scalable quantum computation
IBM Quantum System Two is the bedrock for scalable quantum computation, and is now operational at our lab in Yorktown Heights, NY. It is 22 feet wide, 12 feet high, and today features three IBM Quantum Heron processors. It combines cryogenic infrastructure with third-generation control electronics and classical runtime servers.
IBM Quantum System Two is the modular-architecture quantum computing platform that we will use to realize parallel circuit executions for quantum-centric supercomputing.
Qiskit 1.0 coming in February 2024
Quantum-centric supercomputing is not achieved by hardware alone. It requires performant software for generating and manipulating quantum circuits and middleware for executing hybrid quantum-classical workflows in a heterogeneous computing environment. Qiskit 1.0 marks the first stable release of Qiskit, the most popular quantum computing SDK. It delivers marked improvements in circuit construction, compilation times, and memory consumption compared to earlier releases.
In addition, Qiskit 1.0 outperforms competing compilation frameworks in both runtime and resultant two-qubit gate counts when mapping circuits to quantum hardware.
AI transpilation alpha for Premium Users
IBM brings the power of AI to quantum computing with the world’s first circuit compilation service using reinforcement learning running on the IBM Quantum Platform. This initial preview demonstrates a reduction in two-qubit gate count of 20-50% compared to standard heuristic methods.
Execution modes
To further optimize throughput when executing multiple independent jobs, we introduce batch mode — a new execution mode yielding up to a 5x improvement in execution time relative to single-job submission. In addition, for utility-scale iterative workloads we have released extended Sessions, which allow for combining multiple Sessions together to seamlessly enable advanced quantum-classical workloads.
Qiskit Patterns and Quantum Serverless
IBM introduced Qiskit Patterns, a programming template outlining the structure of quantum programs and a logical framework for building quantum algorithms and applications at scale. Taking advantage of the composability, containerization, and abstraction provided by Qiskit Patterns, users can seamlessly create quantum algorithms and applications from a collection of foundational building blocks and execute those Patterns using heterogeneous computing infrastructure such as Quantum Serverless. This allows for targeted quantum acceleration of preexisting enterprise scale workflows and provides for abstraction away from quantum circuits and operators. With Qiskit Patterns, IBM is announcing the deployment of Quantum Serverless as beta for managed, unattended execution of Patterns at scale.
Generative AI for quantum on watsonx
To better streamline the quantum development process, IBM is pioneering the use of generative AI for quantum code programming through watsonx, the enterprise AI platform from IBM. We demonstrate how generative AI available through watsonx can help automate the development of quantum code for Qiskit. We achieve this through the fine-tuning of the IBM Granite 20-billion parameter code foundation model.
Extended roadmap to 2033
In order to guide our mission to realize quantum-centric supercomputing, we are expanding our industry-defining roadmap out to 2033 for a decade worth of quantum innovation. The roadmap highlights improvements in the number of gates that our processors and systems will be able to execute. Starting with a target of Heron reaching 5,000 gates in 2024, the roadmap lays out multiple generations of processors, each leveraging improvements in quality to achieve ever-larger gate counts.
Then, in 2029, we hit an inflection point: executing 100 million gates over 200 qubits with our Starling processor employing error correction based on the novel Gross code. This is followed by Blue Jay, a system capable of executing 1 billion gates across 2,000 qubits by 2033. This represents a nine order-of-magnitude increase in performed gates since we put our first device on the cloud in 2016. Our new innovation roadmap will demonstrates the technology needed to realize the Gross code through l-, m-, and c-couplers to be demonstrated by Flamingo, Crossbill, and Kookaburra, respectively.
Laying the groundwork for quantum-powered use cases
University of Tokyo, Argonne National Laboratory, Fundacion Ikerbasque, Qedma, Algorithmiq, University of Washington, University of Cologne, Harvard University, UC Berkeley, Q-CTRL all demonstrated new research to explore the power of utility-scale quantum computing. These demonstrations showed that advances in both device quality and new capabilities are allowing us to explore more challenging circuits, extending beyond quantum computing native problems to use quantum and classical working together to extend the reach of the systems.
Updating our offerings for the era of utility
Entering the era of utility means a shift of focus to providing a Qiskit Runtime service designed for utility-scale experiments and availability to utility-scale systems across all of our access plans. Now, we make 100+ qubit systems available on our Open Plan to provide free access to start your quantum journey, on our Pay-As-You-Go Plan, on our Premium Plan that provides reserved capacity, and on our Dedicated Service which provides a dedicated managed system deployed at our partners’ locations.
Quantum Accelerator 3.0
Entering the era of utility opens up new opportunities for enterprises to engage with quantum computing and explore workforce integration. We are expanding our enterprise offerings to continue to advance industry use cases for utility-scale quantum computing.
IBM Quantum Safe
This progress in quantum technology also means that to keep our data secure, we need new cryptography based on mathematical problems that are challenging to both quantum and classical computers. IBM Quantum Safe helps enterprises assess their cryptographic posture and modernize their cybersecurity landscape for the era of quantum utility.
Our updated IBM Quantum Safe roadmap highlights how we are continuing to advance research into quantum-safe cryptography, foster industry partnerships to drive adoption of post-quantum cryptographic solutions, and develop new quantum-safe technologies — including IBM Quantum Safe Explorer, our cryptographic discovery tool released this past October.
The era of utility is here — and now it’s up to you to use utility-scale systems to explore the potential of quantum. Learn more on our updated platform, here
credits: @IBM
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