June 10 (UPI) — IBM on Tuesday revealed its map to the development of its large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer styled as “Quantum Starling.”
The Quantum Starling, to be built at IBM headquarters in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., will be part of IBM’s new Quantum Nighthawk processor set for release later this year.
“IBM is charting the next frontier in quantum computing,” IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna said Tuesday.
The Nighthawk is set to replace the Quantum Heron processor, the company said in a blog post. The Nighthawk, meanwhile, runs at 5,000 gates like the Heron with plans to boost it to 15,000 gates within the next three years.
A quantum gate is a basic operation on a qubit, the basic unit of quantum information.
IBM officials say the Nighthawk charts the first viable path toward a system projected to run 20,000 times more operations than quantum computers by today’s standard.
“Our expertise across mathematics, physics, and engineering is paving the way for a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer — one that will solve real-world challenges and unlock immense possibilities for business,” Krishna added.
“Unlocking the full promise of quantum computing will require a device capable of running larger, deeper circuits with hundreds of millions of gates operating on hundreds of qubits, at least,” the company blog post said.
“More than that, it will require a device capable of correcting errors and preventing them from spreading throughout the system.”
It added that it will require a fault-tolerant quantum computer. Fault tolerance is a system’s ability to correct and act with known errors.
This follows other tech companies in the quantum race such as Google’s “Willow,” the quantum chip Majorana 1 by Microsoft and the “Ocelot” chip from Amazon.
