Qubit by qubit, researchers are inching closer to making large-scale quantum computing a reality.

IBM Corp. today revealed that it has developed a quantum computer with more than twice the processing components as its previous largest machines.

The new system packs 53 qubits compared with the earlier models’ 20 and features a number of major changes, including an improved chip design. IBM has also modified some of the onboard electronics to reduce the occurrence of data errors.

Quantum computers are highly unstable machines that can only perform calculations for short periods of time before information is lost or corrupted. The blame largely lies in the the fragility of the underlying qubits. At the physical level, qubits are composed not of the transistors found inside classical computers but rather atomic or subatomic particles cooled to cryogenic temperatures.

Figuring out how to keep these particles from “decohering” is one of the great challenges facing the organizations trying to commercialize the technology. Besides IBM, this group includes the likes of Google LLC and Microsoft Corp. along with startups such Rigetti Computing Inc., which is currently working on a 100-plus-qubit system. 

IBM’s 53-qubit computer is not quite as large, but it’s described as the most powerful system yet to have made available by a company to other organizations. IBM will give researchers remote access to the machine through its Q Network when system installation completes next month.

The company said the computer will reside in a recently constructed quantum computing center located on its Poughkeepsie, New York campus. The facility will be home to a total of 14 systems by November, including five based on a new 20-qubit architecture. These systems will provide twice the performance of the earlier 20-qubit machines that IBM built in 2018.  

“Our strategy, since we put the very first quantum computer on the cloud in 2016, was to move quantum computing beyond isolated lab experiments conducted by a handful of organizations, into the hands of tens of thousands of users,” said Dario Gil, the director of IBM Research. “We iterate and improve the performance of our systems multiple times per year.”

IBM provides access to its fleet of quantum machines for about 80 organizations including enterprises such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and academic institutions. So far, researchers have used the hardware to run more than 14 million experiments in areas ranging from battery chemistry to options trading. 

Photo: IBM