IBM announces 127 quantum-bit processor

In time for the Quantum Summit 2021 held from November 16, IBM announced Eagle, a 127 quantum bit processor, and unveiled an overview of IBM Quantum System Two, a next-generation quantum computer system. . IBM claims the Eagle is the first processor that cannot be fully simulated in a traditional supercomputer.

According to IBM, the Eagle is a major step forward in scaling up quantum computing and is IBM’s first processor with more than 100 quantum bits. He added that the processor will be a demarcation that shows that it’s going well somewhere along the way.

The design difference between the existing quantum processor and Eagle is that the control unit is arranged in multiple physical layers and the quantum bits are arranged in one layer. said to have been

The Eagle processor is said to be available only to select members of the IBM Quantum Network as an IBM Cloud Exploratory system from December. Exploration systems provide early access to IBM’s latest technologies and do not guarantee any specific level of repeatable performance as measured in uptime or quantum volumes.

It is difficult to simply compare the Eagle processor with other quantum computers because it has not been described using the scale of quantum volume, and quantum bits alone cannot specifically indicate performance. For reference, IBM announced a 27 quantum bit system last year and explained that it achieved 64QV and 64 quantum volumes. Also in October of last year, Honeywell announced the Model H1 system, which claimed to be 128 QV with 10 quantum bits.

This article revealed that it is 127 quantum bits, so if you look at the number, you can think of it as higher performance than quantum computers so far. But IBM doesn’t claim quantum transcendence on this processor either. Quantum transcendence refers to the ability of a quantum computer to perform tasks that are nearly impossible to perform in time infinitely close to that of a traditional computer. In response, IBM said that this article has not yet reached the stage of achieving performance that can solve problems that conventional computers cannot solve.

Regarding quantum transcendence, Google claimed to have accomplished a feat in the Sycamore system in 2019, but it was a system built only for solving specific problems that were prepared in advance. Meanwhile, China announced that it achieved quantum transcendence in a photon quantum computer (Jiuzhang) using optical quantum technology in 2020, but this is also a prototype for performing a single pre-prepared task, and has no ability to perform general-purpose processing.

However, Eagle processors are limited but available on the IBM Quantum Network via the cloud. From a practical point of view, Eagle is the world’s best quantum computer. Related information can be found here.