IBM Plans to Commercialize 58-Qubit Quantum Computer
Norishige Morimoto, Director of IBM Research in Tokyo and global vice president at IBM, said that IBM intends to commercialize quantum computers within 3-5 years, when he expects quantum computers to outperform supercomputers in specific domains.
[...] The company's latest System Q One quantum computing system has a 20-qubit quantum processor with a quantum volume of 16. Quantum volume is a quantum computing performance metric IBM believes is more accurate than just using qubits alone. Quantum volume uses a combination of the number of qubits and error rate to determine the real-world performance of a quantum processor. The company is currently giving others free and paid access to its existing quantum computers.
IBM, Google and others have said before that to achieve quantum supremacy, a quantum computer needs at least 50 qubits. Morimoto said that IBM plans to launch a next-generation 58-qubit quantum computer that can outperform supercomputers and thus are suitable for commercialization.
However, don't expect to own one of these any time soon, as they will require a working environment with a temperature of -273 degrees Celsius to protect the qubits from interference. As such, IBM believes that this sort of quantum computer will work best as a companion to classical supercomputers.
Room temperature or bust.
Previously: IBM Announces Working Prototype of a 50-Qubit Quantum Computer
IBM Announces its First Commercially Available Quantum Computer (20 qubits)
IBM's New Quantum Computer Will Have You Drooling
Related Stories
IBM Raises the Bar with a 50-Qubit Quantum Computer
IBM established a landmark in computing Friday, announcing a quantum computer that handles 50 quantum bits, or qubits. The company is also making a 20-qubit system available through its cloud computing platform.
IBM, Google, Intel, and a San Francisco startup called Rigetti are all currently racing to build useful quantum systems. These machines process information in a different way from traditional computers, using the counterintuitive nature of quantum physics.
The announcement does not mean quantum computing is ready for common use. The system IBM has developed is still extremely finicky and challenging to use, as are those being built by others. In both the 50- and the 20-qubit systems, the quantum state is preserved for 90 microseconds—a record for the industry, but still an extremely short period of time.
[...] IBM is also announcing an upgrade to its quantum cloud software system today. "We're at world record pace. But we've got to make sure non-physicists can use this," Gil says.
The announcement should perhaps be treated cautiously, though. Andrew Childs, a professor at the University of Maryland, points out that IBM has not published details of its system in a peer-reviewed journal. "IBM's team is fantastic and it's clear they're serious about this, but without looking at the details it's hard to comment," he says. Childs says the larger number of qubits does not necessarily translate to a leap in computational capability. "Those qubits might be noisy, and there could be issues with how well connected they are," he says.
Also at The Mercury News and SiliconANGLE.
Previously: IBM Promises Commercialization of 50 Qubit Quantum Computers
IBM and D-Wave Quantum Computing Announcements
Intel Ships 17-Qubit Quantum Chip to Researchers
Google's Quantum Computing Plans Threatened by IBM Curveball (doesn't this undermine IBM's quantum system as well?)
Related: Microsoft is Developing a Quantum Computing Programming Language
IBM unveils its first commercial quantum computer
At CES, IBM today announced its first commercial quantum computer for use outside of the lab. The 20-qubit system combines into a single package the quantum and classical computing parts it takes to use a machine like this for research and business applications. That package, the IBM Q system, is still huge, of course, but it includes everything a company would need to get started with its quantum computing experiments, including all the machinery necessary to cool the quantum computing hardware.
While IBM describes it as the first fully integrated universal quantum computing system designed for scientific and commercial use, it's worth stressing that a 20-qubit machine is nowhere near powerful enough for most of the commercial applications that people envision for a quantum computer with more qubits — and qubits that are useful for more than 100 microseconds. It's no surprise then, that IBM stresses that this is a first attempt and that the systems are "designed to one day tackle problems that are currently seen as too complex and exponential in nature for classical systems to handle." Right now, we're not quite there yet, but the company also notes that these systems are upgradable (and easy to maintain).
Quantum computers are real things, right?
Submitted via IRC for FatPhil.
In the centre of a cold tiled room sits a monolithic glass cube. Inside, suspended from its upper ceiling, hangs a mercurial cylinder reflecting its surrounds like a monochrome kaleidoscope.
The scene is unmistakably sci-fi, but this dazzling object is not an extraterrestrial that has arrived unannounced, but an earthborn quantum computer, produced by the ever-enduring IBM and dubbed 'Q System One'.
IBM took the wraps off its new "integrated universal approximate" quantum system at CES last night, which Big Blue says is the world's first designed for enterprise and academic use.
Businesses and academics won't be able to (technically) get their hands on the new system however, as IBM will be keeping Q System One tucked away, leasing access only via IBM cloud.
Other quantum companies offer cloud access to their systems, a trend started by IBM several years ago. But by enlisting the company that makes display cases for the Mona Lisa and the crown jewels, IBM evidently thinks one way to attract a critical mass to its quantum cloud service is to produce the most attractive quantum block, on the block.
Source: https://techerati.com/news-hub/ibms-new-quantum-computer-will-have-you-drooling/
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday May 28 2019, @06:30PM
Would that be an individual supervillain or a group? Or maybe a plot? Or maybe it's like nirvana, but for STEM types.
(Score: 4, Touché) by flybrag on Tuesday May 28 2019, @06:43PM (6 children)
I think there is a world market for maybe five quantum computers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @07:34PM (4 children)
If quantum computers can be proven to simulate nuclear reactions, and break encryption, many governments will be lining up with truck-fulls of money.
(Score: 5, Touché) by EvilSS on Tuesday May 28 2019, @08:17PM
Guess which one.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday May 28 2019, @11:07PM (2 children)
Yeah, I think that's pretty obvious. GP was quoting a former president of IBM (Thomas Watson) who famously said in the 1940s that there was a world market for maybe five computers...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 29 2019, @01:00AM
Ahhh, thanks for that. I was not familiar with that quote.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 29 2019, @03:46AM
And at the time, he was probably right.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday May 29 2019, @05:49PM
Isn't that what they said about normal computers?
(Score: 5, Funny) by sshelton76 on Tuesday May 28 2019, @06:49PM
So what you're saying is that Quantum Programming is what all the cool kids are doing?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 28 2019, @07:46PM (1 child)
then the rain starts.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @07:54PM
Only if you make an observation. Instead, avoid collapsing the wave function by buring your head in the sand and all will be well!
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday May 28 2019, @09:38PM (6 children)
> Room temperature or bust.
Nah, if it needs to be cooled it is still commercializable.. What becomes a problem is when it needs these sort of extremely low temps that require regular delivery of liquefied gases or an onsite production facility. Gets kinda spendy either way, even in the rarefied budgeting associated with high end computing.
I'm questioning the 50 qubits is "quantum supremacy" assertion. What can actually be done with only 50 bits? You couldn't even try to crack an AES key, could you? And no public key system ever used keys that short. Suspect modeling nukes also needs a few bits as well. Thinking this is just another "We gotta beat the Reds to this" WE MUST NOT LOSE THE RACE FOR QUANTUM SUPREMACY!! IT WOULD BE LIKE LETTING IVAN LAND ON THE MOON FIRST!! GIVE US SACKS OF CASH OR YOU DON'T CARE IF AMERICA LOSES TO CHINA!!
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday May 28 2019, @10:14PM (2 children)
Quite.y ice cream doesn’t work at room temperature, yet it’s commercialised.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday May 28 2019, @11:20PM
In fact, it's even creamier when it's liquid-nitrogen cooled ... wait a second ... quantum supercomputers that also make extra-creamy ice cream? Quite.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Wednesday May 29 2019, @04:32AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 28 2019, @11:12PM
I want 1 million qubit chips in smartphones with no cooling.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 29 2019, @12:15AM (1 child)
A bit and a qubit are very different things. 50 qubits would have factoral 50 computational outcomes. You could easily break 4k RSA keys with that. Assuming of course this is a general purpose quantum computer and not yet another annealer
(Score: 4, Informative) by stormwyrm on Wednesday May 29 2019, @03:59AM
No. 58 qubits is nowhere near enough to break any RSA keys that were ever in use. To use Shor's algorithm to factor a number you have to have at least twice the number of qubits as there are bits in the key, probably a little bit more because you want some error correction too. With only 58 qubits you might be able to factor a number of about 29 bits or so, maybe a number like 394,245,403 you'd be able to factor that way. Much easier and faster to do trial division on a normal computer to factor a number like that. A long, long way from the kinds of moduli that were ever used for RSA in the real world.
It's far from useless however. A 58-qubit quantum computer however would probably be very good at molecular dynamics simulations and such though: such quantum-mechanical systems are notoriously expensive to simulate on classical computers even when the number of particles involved is still fairly modest. It might even be able to simulate certain kinds of systems involving the other fundamental interactions that are difficult even for the most powerful classical computers of today.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 28 2019, @09:58PM (2 children)
See how easy it is to work in marketing.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 28 2019, @11:12PM (1 child)
If you were a real marketer you would have went straight to 64 qubits.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 29 2019, @12:13AM
A real marketer would convince you that 20 quibit is the new 50 :)