IBM Opens Quantum Computation Center in New York, Unveils New 53-Qubit Quantum System for Broad Use
IBM is opening the IBM Quantum Computation Center in New York State.
The new center expands the company's fleet of quantum computing systems for commercial and research activity that exist beyond the confines of experimental lab environments.
The IBM Quantum Computation Center will support the needs of a community of over 150,000 registered users and nearly 80 commercial clients, academic institutions and research laboratories to advance quantum computing and explore practical applications.
The global community of users have run more than 14 million experiments on IBM's quantum computers through the cloud since 2016, and published more than 200 scientific papers. To meet demand for access to real quantum hardware, ten quantum computing systems are now online through IBM's Quantum Computation Center. The fleet is now composed of five 20-qubit systems, one 14-qubit system, and four 5-qubit systems. Five of the systems now have a Quantum Volume of 16 – a measure of the power of a quantum computer developed by IBM. Quantum Volume is a system-level performance metric that accounts for gate and measurement errors, device cross-talk and connectivity, and circuit compiler software efficiency. IBM’s goal is to double Quantum Volume every year, and to ultimately demonstrate quantum advantage within the next decade. As a measure of quantum computational power, increases in Quantum Volume correlate with the ability to solve larger, more complex problems across a range of disciplines.
Within one month, IBM's commercially available quantum fleet will grow to 14 systems, including a new 53-qubit quantum computer, the single largest universal quantum system made available for external access in the industry, to date.
"Our strategy, since we put the very first quantum computer on the cloud in 2016, was to move quantum computing beyond isolated lab experiments conducted by a handful of organizations, into the hands of tens of thousands of users," said Dario Gil, Director of IBM Research. "In order to empower an emerging quantum community of educators, researchers, and software developers that share a passion for revolutionizing computing, we have built multiple generations of quantum processor platforms that we integrate into high-availability quantum systems. We iterate and improve the performance of our systems multiple times per year and this new 53-qubit system now incorporates the next family of processors on our roadmap."
IBM's goal is to help the global IBM Q community get “quantum ready” – to prepare to take full advantage of the quantum computing era as it arrives.