IBM Unveils Its 433 Qubit Osprey Quantum Computer (techcrunch.com) 29
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: IBM wants to scale up its quantum computers to over 4,000 qubits by 2025 -- but we're not quite there yet. For now, we have to make do with significantly smaller systems and today, IBM announced the launch of its Osprey quantum processor, which features 433 qubits, up from the 127 qubits of its 2021 Eagle processor. And with that, the slow but steady march toward a quantum processor with real-world applications continues.
IBM's quantum roadmap includes two additional stages -- the 1,121-qubit Condor and 1,386-qubit Flamingo processors in 2023 and 2024 -- before it plans to hit the 4,000-qubit stage with its Kookaburra processor in 2025. So far, the company has generally been able to make this roadmap work, but the number of qubits in a quantum processor is obviously only one part of a very large and complex puzzle, with longer coherence times and reduced noise being just as important.
The company also today detailed (Link: YouTube) its Quantum System Two -- basically IBM's quantum mainframe -- which will be able to house multiple quantum processors and integrate them into a single system with high-speed communication links. The idea here is to launch this system by the end of 2023. "The new 433 qubit 'Osprey' processor brings us a step closer to the point where quantum computers will be used to tackle previously unsolvable problems," said Dario Gil, senior vice president, IBM and director of Research. "We are continuously scaling up and advancing our quantum technology across hardware, software and classical integration to meet the biggest challenges of our time, in conjunction with our partners and clients worldwide. This work will prove foundational for the coming era of quantum-centric supercomputing."
Further reading: IBM Held Talks With Biden Administration on Quantum Controls
IBM's quantum roadmap includes two additional stages -- the 1,121-qubit Condor and 1,386-qubit Flamingo processors in 2023 and 2024 -- before it plans to hit the 4,000-qubit stage with its Kookaburra processor in 2025. So far, the company has generally been able to make this roadmap work, but the number of qubits in a quantum processor is obviously only one part of a very large and complex puzzle, with longer coherence times and reduced noise being just as important.
The company also today detailed (Link: YouTube) its Quantum System Two -- basically IBM's quantum mainframe -- which will be able to house multiple quantum processors and integrate them into a single system with high-speed communication links. The idea here is to launch this system by the end of 2023. "The new 433 qubit 'Osprey' processor brings us a step closer to the point where quantum computers will be used to tackle previously unsolvable problems," said Dario Gil, senior vice president, IBM and director of Research. "We are continuously scaling up and advancing our quantum technology across hardware, software and classical integration to meet the biggest challenges of our time, in conjunction with our partners and clients worldwide. This work will prove foundational for the coming era of quantum-centric supercomputing."
Further reading: IBM Held Talks With Biden Administration on Quantum Controls
Re: (Score:3)
Weren't most, if not all crashes either during flight or landing?
Million monkeys Shakespeare (Score:2)
If it takes a million monkeys to write Shakespeare from randomness, how many qubits would it take?
Re: Million monkeys Shakespeare (Score:2)
What does a count of qubits mean for a CPU? (Score:2)
Maybe there's something fundamentally different about QC that I'm missing but using my knowledge of digital computing, this is meaningless. No one would say "a 4kb CPU", when talking about compute power it's either a count of transistors/gates or operations per second (I doubt this has 433qb wide words).
Or is this not a CPU and just a piece of quantum RAM?
Re: What does a count of qubits mean for a CPU? (Score:3, Informative)
Re: What does a count of qubits mean for a CPU? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps, but real quantum computers will render all data transmitted over the web readable despite all current encryption standards. But they probably need a lot more qbits than they've got. And they may need to reduce the uncorrected errors.
I, personally, don't see any use for that, but several governments have agencies that do.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps, but real quantum computers will render all data transmitted over the web readable despite all current encryption standards.
So will time travel, and witchcraft, and mind reading. We're in for a rocky future.
Re: (Score:2)
Theoretically, the entangled states of the qubits can be used to "perform" certain calculations.
Re: (Score:2)
AFAIK, A quantum computer isn't a computer in the classical sense, it's more like a maths co-processor. You load data into it, it performs an operation, and you read data out. The number of qubits is the number of bits you read out, but what you load in includes relationships between those bits, I think. Take this with a grain of salt, though, I'm not really sure.
Reality (Score:3)
And with that, the slow but steady march toward a quantum processor with real-world applications continues.
The best part about a quantum processor with real world applications is you don’t need it running in the real world to solve problems using counterfactual quantum computation [wikipedia.org]. Unfortunately we would need a working computer to show it’s not working, which would demonstrate it working.
Will logical qubits need 100x more physical qubits (Score:2)
Is this correct ?
If true, it means IBM's 4000-physical qubit machine is still a long way from being useful.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I guess if you're wildly optimistic. Reasonable estimates usually put the number in the low millions before you can do anything useful.
Ridiculous! (Score:5, Funny)
This is ridiculous, 640 qubits should be enough for anyone!
Re: (Score:2)
Not when it's fake qubits (logical qubits vs. physical qubits BS). To factor 2048 bit RSA (what https uses these days) they are going to need possibly tens of thousands of qubits (instead of the theoretical four thousand) given their architecture and error correction requirements.
Floating Point Error (Score:2)
"Detailed"?? (Score:3)
The company also today detailed (Link: YouTube) its Quantum System Two
You call a 1:24m promo video with barely any info "detailed"??
What will their ... (Score:3)
Re: What will their ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Play Qbert. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
If I'm understanding this emerging technology correctly a single qubit represents a huge amount of computing power.
Any actual computing? (Score:2)
Let me know when they are actually doing any kind of computing. So far, the only "progress" is in techniques for building qubits. It feels a bit like fusion energy to me, lots and lots of money invested and ways for researchers to make money writing books, but nothing real yet.
The laugh of a Kookaburra (Score:3)
So you all know what a Kookaburra sounds like. If anyone has seen a movie where the cast is in the jungle and you hear a loud laughing sound from the trees THAT is the sound of a Kookaburra.
They are about 2 kilograms of predatory bird that are confident and have a hell of an attitude, I had one steal a slab roast beef directly off my plate when I was eating out side once as they are smart and opportunistic. They have a sharp snapping beak and usually prey on snakes and may kill other birds dumb enough to get to close to them.
Except Cockatoos who are about the same size and intelligence and seem to mess with Kookaburras for a bit of fun. Perhaps a Cockatoo will be the 8000 qubit processor.
Quantum Computing, what does 433 qubits get us? (Score:2)
I was wondering what 433 qubits gets oneself.
The link below provides a wide overview of quantum computing as well it's pretty current state.
Choice quote related to 433 qubits:
"âoeEstimates range from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands of physical qubits required to form one fault-tolerant qubit. I think itâ(TM)s safe to say that none of the technology we have at the moment could scale out to those levels,â Carter said."
Fault tolerance is getting close on a single qubit.
What has been d
running on actual hardware (Score:2)
Been playing with a simple BV algorithm (https://qiskit.org/textbook/ch-algorithms/bernstein-vazirani.html). I used a six bit hidden string. Ran each hidden string 3072 times. What I found is when the hidden string was all zeros, the IBM's processor return the correct result about 90% of the time. If the bit string was all '1's, it returned the correct answer 10% of the time. Otherwise it it was almost linear between those two extremes with the number of '1's in the bitstring. IonQ did a similar test on the