IBM has recently announced that to launch a new 53-qubit Quantum Computer, as well as a new Quantum Computation Center in New York State. The company will soon make it available to IBM Q Network customer.
According to the press reports, the new IBM system will be the largest universal quantum computer available to the public. In this way, the US-based company hopes to expand its ecosystem for quantum computing research and commercial applications.
This new system will be available mid-October and comes with various improvements. For instance, there is a new processor design that reduces cross-talk and allows users to investigate how algorithms scale to a larger qubit system. The system also has more compact, proprietary electronics to reduce error rates.
IBM says that since 2016, 14 million experiments have been conducted via its cloud service. The company also has more than 150,000 registered users and 80 commercial customers, academic and research institutions in its quantum computing community.
The coming enhancements at IBM are also aimed in this direction. The announced 53-qubit quantum computer will therefore also be available externally, making it the world’s largest system of its kind. Google had already announced last year a 72-qubit solution, but only in the laboratory and only for their own purposes.
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IBM’s Quantum Computation Center currently includes ten systems – five with 20-qubits, a 14-qubit system, and four 5-qubit computers, but the number will rise to 14 in October. Its quantum computing center is designed for commercial use cases and reliable operations with 95% availability.
As before, the systems still years away from real production use. It will probably take at least five years, but the systems will become commercially relevant only at around one million qubits of computing power.
