November 12, 2017 at 13:12

IBM Research Announces 50-Qubit Quantum Computer

    At the summit of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), IBM announced the development of a 50-qubit quantum computer. Quantum computers perform a specific range of tasks with incredible speed. And a machine with 50 qubits, according to Google, is able to outperform the most powerful supercomputers. / photo IBM Research CC To date, this computer is the most productive quantum machine. But there is no need to talk about its mass distribution and entry into commercial markets. According to company representatives, the new system requires special working conditions.






    Professor Andrew Childs from the University of Maryland noted that IBM has not yet published the technical details of the new machine, so it's too early to judge its performance. Childs added that an increase in the number of quantum discharges does not always lead to an increase in computing power. The qubits can interfere with each other, which affects the "tightness" of their ties.

    In addition to the 50-qubit machine, the IBM conference presented his 20-qubit quantum computer system to which it will be possible to get access from the cloud (IBM Q). The company notes that users will be able to start working with the system at the end of this year, and at the beginning of 2018 it will receive a series of upgrades.

    Next year, the IT giant plans to continue to improve its devices: improve the quality of qubits and connections, reduce the percentage of calculation errors. For example, over the past 6 months, scientists have managed to extend the life of qubits to 90 μs, which is twice as much as previous “cloud” 5- and 16-qubit computers.

    Ecosystem development


    IBM also continues to evolve the quantum ecosystem by developing open source software tools, applications, and community learning materials . Already more than 60 thousand customers have taken advantage of the capabilities of IBM Q and conducted 1.7 million experiments. Based on them, 35 publications were written. Among the registered participants are 1,500 universities, 300 schools and 300 private organizations. IBM is convinced that this is important for the development of quantum computing.

    To help other scientists, IBM introduced the QISKit project earlier this year .- software development package for quantum computers. QISKit allows you to run applications on real IBM quantum processors or a simulator. The latest updates to the package include tools for visualizing the states of a quantum system and a compiler .

    Princeton University professor Andrew Houck says that thanks to this service, his students run quantum algorithms on real quantum machines. According to him, this significantly increased interest in classes. And Matt Johnson, CEO of QC Ware, notes that QISKit helps them understand what kind of user cases for quantum algorithms may be in demand in the future.

    Future technology


    IBM Research has made significant advances in research since the creation of the first quantum computer. But not only they participate in the "quantum race". Google and Intel are also developing their own solutions. Another player in this area is startup Rigetti from San Francisco. And the Canadian company D-Wave is already selling computers based on quantum annealing technology that NASA and Google bought.

    In the future, quantum computers promise to become the main computing force in solving a number of problems, for example, optimization problems or chemical simulations. It is expected that quantum computing will create new types of drugs and materials, as well as quickly find solutions for the traveling salesman problem and the maximum cut problem .

    PS And here are some more materials from our corporate blog:

    Tags:

    Also popular now: