IBM said on Tuesday it plans to build the world's first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer at its New York data center before the end of the decade.

IBM Quantum Roadmap

IBM's quantum computer performance goals and timeline

The tech giant said its new quantum computer, IBM Quantum Starling, will be located in the Poughkeepsie center in New York State, with a computing power 20,000 times that of existing quantum computers. Jay Gambetta, vice president of IBM Quantum, said he is confident that "fault-tolerant quantum computers will be realized by the end of this century," and that error correction technology has been incorporated into the roadmap, with scientific problems basically solved.

The computer, called IBM Quantum Starling, will be housed at the center in Poughkeepsie, New York, and will have 20,000 times the computing power of today's quantum computers.

"I am more confident than ever that a fault-tolerant quantum computer will be available by the end of this decade," said Jay Gambetta, vice president of IBM Quantum. "We are incorporating error correction technology into our roadmap in detail because we believe that now we have solved all the hard scientific problems."

Quantum computers are susceptible to instabilities and require quantum error correction - a technique to identify and fix computational errors - and more broadly, quantum fault tolerance, the ability to operate even in the presence of errors.

Among the companies racing to build a practical quantum computer, from tech giants like Microsoft and Google to quantum companies like D-Wave, Quantinuum and IonQ, IBM is not the only one promising a fault-tolerant machine by 2029.

Breakthrough in error correction technology

Focus on technical difficulties, especially the core challenge of quantum error correction

Other companies have also made recent advances in error correction, including Amazon's Ocelot quantum computing chip, which it says can reduce quantum errors by up to 90 percent. Google has also focused on error correction, launching its Willow chip.

Quantum computers store information as quantum bits, also known as qubits, which can exist as both "0" and "1" at the same time, making them richer than the binary numbers used by ordinary computers. This allows them to perform more powerful calculations than ordinary computers, which could mean they could help engineer materials at the molecular level or even crack the defenses used to protect the internet.

But one of the main problems with quantum computing is that qubits make errors when solving problems. They are fragile and susceptible to "noise," essentially tiny environmental disturbances that can force them out of their quantum state.

That makes building so-called fault-tolerant quantum computers a priority for tech giants and quantum companies.

Gambetta said IBM's confidence in the 2029 timeline stems from two recent developments: further progress on a new way to reduce errors, called "quantum low-density parity check," or qLDPC codes, and a technique to identify and correct errors in real time using conventional computing.

Industry competition and challenges

Covering competitors, commercial value disputes and industry warnings

Separately, quantum computing startup SEEQC is expected to announce this week a partnership with IBM as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Quantum Benchmarking Program, which aims to assess quantum companies' ability to achieve utility-scale operations.

As part of the collaboration, the two companies will work to shrink and consolidate IBM's control hardware racks, moving some control and readout elements directly onto the chip. SEEQC manufactures its own quantum chips, known as integrated quantum processors (QPUs), at a facility in Elmsford, New York.

IBM is now releasing more detailed plans for its large-scale quantum computer as it hopes to spark developer interest in creating quantum algorithms - a key part of the software that runs on a quantum computer. That's critical to achieving a return on investment in quantum computers, a metric that businesses are looking at, Gambetta said.

But Chirag Dekate, an analyst at IT research and advisory firm Gartner, said it's unclear how IBM's breakthroughs will "translate into tangible business value" and the transformative potential of fault-tolerant quantum computers remains speculative.

IBM's plans also don't reveal details about the commercialization of its new quantum computer, or a specific release date for its error-correction system, Dekate said. In response, IBM insists that it has the most detailed roadmap and commercialization plan in the industry.

"That's inherently difficult to do because there are so many links involved in quantum innovation," Dekate said. "The reality in the quantum field is that we haven't reached a point like ChatGPT, where the technology, algorithms and impact will become tangible and undeniable."

Meanwhile, IDC analyst Heather West said the comprehensiveness of IBM's plan to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer is worth paying attention to.

West added that IBM's plan should serve as a wake-up call to the business and technology community to pay attention to the speed of development of quantum computing.

"When you hear this announcement from IBM and other hardware vendors, you realize that this is a real technology and it's coming to fruition," she said.

Reference link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-has-a-roadmap-to-a-fault-tolerant-quantum-computer-by-2029-91645d73?mod=tech_lead_pos3

Source: Content compiled from WSJ