IBM made a series of announcements at its IBM Quantum Summit this week designed to keep the company at top of the heap as the quantum computing sector surges toward quantum advantage--the ability of quantum computers to out-perform classical computers on given tasks.
Jay Gambetta, IBM Fellow and vice president of quantum computing at IBM, said during the Summit, “After 2023, assuming we continue to hit our goals, we will be in the land of quantum advantage. We say the ‘land’ because we don’t think of quantum advantage as a fixed point in time or a specific event. We see it more as a continuum where applications start off abstract and esoteric and become thoroughly more useful over time.”
The company’s moves this week also eventually could “create $3 billion in value for end users,” according to Matt Langione, principal and head of deep tech, North America for Boston Consulting Group, who also spoke at the event. For example, quantum-driven portfolio optimization functions and applications for the financial services sector that surpass what’s available today could be part of “trader workflows by 2025.”
Eagle
This week’s announcements included the formal launch of IBM’s much-anticipated Eagle processor (described in greater detail in this blog post. The 127-qubit processor is the successor to the 65-qubit Hummingbird processor. The next milestone on IBM’s quantum processor roadmap is the 433-qubit Osprey, due for launch next year, followed by the Condor, a 1,121-qubit whopper that will kick off a new era, Gambetta said.
Additionally, IBM outlined improvements that it has achieved in areas such quantum volume, coherence time, gate fidelities and error rate.
Quantum System Two
IBM also announced its Quantum System Two infrastructure plan, saying that it will be marked by a move to more modular quantum system architectures than the current Quantum System One infrastructures. IBM now has 22 Quantum System One machines deployed in its New York data center, and also has deployed Quantum System One computers in Europe and Asia, with the first planned deployment in a private company set for the Cleveland Clinic.
Acknowledging that it might be hard to understand what the company’s quantum systems actually consist of, Jerry Chow, director of quantum hardware system development at IBM Quantum, said, “System One is the combination of components and wiring within a cryogenic platform, combined with control electronics all to support families of processors” like Falcon, Hummingbird and now Eagle.
Some of the new innovations in System Two will include more flexible and efficient cryogenic cabling, FPGA-based high-bandwidth integrated control electronics and circuit knitting capabilities that allow smaller circuits to be combined to address larger, more complex computing tasks.
As part of this week’s unveilings, IBM said it is partnering with Bluefors, an enabler of cryogenic system technology based in Finland, to “reimagine the cryogenic platform” for IBM quantum systems into something more resembling a “quantum data center,” a large, shared cryogenic workspace.
Quantum Serverless
In addition, IBM announced a new “serverless” programming model for leveraging quantum and classical resources so that developers don’t have to spend time assembling server and container resources, can focus more on their own coding (see this blog post for more details.) Serverless also involves a partnership with IBM Cloud to launch Code Cloud Engine, a platform enable access to the necessary resources.