- IBM unveiled the Nighthawk and Quantum Loon quantum processors, marking significant progress toward verified quantum advantage and fault-tolerant computers.
- Nighthawk features 120 qubits and 218 couplers, supporting circuits with up to 5,000 two-qubit gates.
- IBM aims to achieve community-verified quantum advantage by 2026 and fault tolerance milestones by 2029.
- The company reported a tenfold improvement in real-time error correction and transitioned quantum chip production to a 300-millimeter wafer line to accelerate development.
IBM announced advancements in quantum computing with the release of two new processors, Nighthawk and Quantum Loon, along with software and fabrication enhancements. These developments aim to bring quantum computers closer to achieving verified quantum advantage by 2026 and fault tolerance by 2029.
Quantum advantage refers to when a quantum computer can perform a task beyond the reach of classical computers. Fault tolerance means the quantum system can maintain stable performance despite errors. Nighthawk features 120 qubits connected via 218 tunable couplers, supporting circuits with roughly 5,000 two-qubit gates, which is about 30% more complex than IBM’s previous Heron processor released in 2023. The first Nighthawk systems are expected to be available to users by the end of 2025, with plans to scale beyond 1,000 connected qubits by 2028.
Although these advancements move quantum computing closer to practical use, cracking Bitcoin’s elliptic curve cryptography would still require a fault-tolerant quantum computer with about 2,000 logical qubits, equating to tens of millions of physical qubits after error correction. The new processors do not yet pose a risk to existing Bitcoin encryption.
IBM also reported progress on the Quantum Loon processor, which demonstrates crucial hardware needed for fault-tolerant quantum computing. Key features include long-range “c-couplers” for linking distant qubits and the ability to reset qubits during operations. The company achieved a tenfold increase in real-time error decoding speed, completing correction under 480 nanoseconds using quantum low-density parity-check codes, ahead of schedule.
To speed up development, production of quantum chips moved to a 300-millimeter wafer line at the Albany NanoTech Complex in New York. This shift has doubled research speed, increased chip complexity tenfold, and enabled parallel exploration of multiple processor designs.
Alongside hardware, IBM is expanding its Qiskit software to improve quantum computations. Enhancements have increased accuracy by 24% at scales of 100 qubits, and a new C-API interface connects Qiskit with classical high-performance systems to accelerate error mitigation by over 100 times.
IBM also partnered with organizations including Algorithmiq, the Flatiron Institute, and BlueQubit to launch an open-source quantum-advantage tracker. By 2027, additional computational libraries for machine learning and optimization will be added to help researchers model physical and chemical systems.
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