IBM hopes to scale its quantum computer to more than 4,000 quantum bits by 2025 but hasn’t quite reached that goal yet. Today, IBM announced the launch of its Osprey quantum processor with 433 quantum bits, up from 127 quantum bits in the 2021 Eagle processor, a slow but steady march toward a quantum processor with real-world applications.
“The new 433-quantum-bit ‘Osprey’ processor brings us one step closer to the use of quantum computers for solving previously unsolvable problems,” said Dario Gil, senior vice president and director of research at IBM.” We are continuing to expand and advance our quantum technologies, including hardware, software, and classical integration, to meet the greatest challenges of our time with our partners and customers around the world. This work will prove fundamental to the coming era of quantum-centric supercomputing.”
IBM’s quantum roadmap includes two additional phases – the 1121-quantum-bit Condor and the 1386-quantum-bit Flamingo processor in 2023 and 2024 – before it plans to enter the 4,000-quantum-bit phase with its Kookaburra processor in 2025. So far, the company has generally been able to achieve this roadmap, but the number of quantum bits in a quantum processor is clearly only part of a very large and complex puzzle, and longer coherence times and noise reduction are equally important.
Ideally, developers who want to use these machines don’t have to worry about this, so the tools they use increasingly abstract the hardware problem for them. With the new version of Qiskit Runtime, for example, developers can now trade speed for a lower error count.
The company today also detailed its Quantum System Two, which can be thought of as an IBM quantum mainframe for external services that will be able to house multiple quantum processors and integrate them into a single system with high-speed communication links, which IBM is expected to launch by the end of 2023.
