International Business Machines (IBM) on Wednesday said it launched its most powerful quantum computer to date called the Osprey, a 433-qubit machine that has three times the number of qubits than its Eagle machine announced last year.
The number of qubits, or quantum bits, are an indication of
the power of the quantum computer which uses quantum mechanics, although
different quantum computer companies make different claims about the power of
their qubits which can be created in many different ways.
Quantum computers are one day expected to speed up certain
calculations millions of times faster than the fastest supercomputers today.
Dario Gil, IBM's director of research, said IBM is still on
track to launch a computer with over 1,000 qubits but for further scaling was
working on a new approach.
"As we push the limits of the size of the Osprey chip
that we're announcing, if you look at it, it's really big already. Next year,
1,000 is going to be very big," he said. "So after that, we have been
designing and engineering the whole architecture for quantum computing based on
modularity."
IBM is calling the modular system Quantum System Two.
"Quantum System Two is the first truly modular quantum
computing system so that you can continue to scale to larger and larger systems
over time," Gil told Reuters ahead of the IBM Quantum Summit this week.
"Modularity means the chips themselves are going to have to be
interconnected to one another."
IBM said it is targeting this system to be online by end of
next year and it would be the building blocks for "quantum-centric
supercomputing" by connecting multiple Quantum System Twos. IBM said it
could build a system with up to 16,632 qubits by linking three of these
systems.
IBM has over 20 quantum computers around the world, and
customers can access them through the cloud.
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