IBM Announces 127-qubit “Eagle” Quantum Processor
16 November, 2021
At the annual Quantum Summit today, IBM upped the ante by announcing its latest quantum Processor, codenamed Eagle. The new quantum processor is the world’s first to feature more than 100 operational and connected qubits – 127, to be exact.
“The arrival of the ‘Eagle’ processor is a major step towards the day when quantum computers can outperform classical computers at meaningful levels,” said Dr. Darío Gil, Senior Vice President, IBM and Director of Research. “Quantum computing has the power to transform nearly every sector and help us tackle the biggest problems of our time. This is why IBM continues to rapidly innovate quantum hardware design, build ways for quantum and classical workloads to empower each other, and create a global ecosystem that is imperative to the adoption of quantum computing.”
Applications for quantum computing - now accelerated with IBM’s Eagle – can be found anywhere from machine learning optimizations; materials and molecule modelling (essentially covering almost all elements of life, from molecular gastronomy to engineering materials and substrates); to drug and energy industry research fields. There now exists a quantum computer that can solve computational problems no classical computing system can crack. At least, not before the Universe were to die out - twice over, in some cases. Unfortunately, the Eagle is still only available as an exploratory device on the IBM Cloud, via its IBM Quantum Network initiative.
IBM’s Eagle naturally builds upon design decisions from the company’s previous achievements. It follows the 65-qubit Hummingbird (2020) and the 27-qubit Falcon processor from 2019, and takes lessons learned from both those architectures to achieve even more complex quantum circuits than were ever possible before. While qubits can be looked at as the equivalent of your laptop’s cores, quantum circuits represent the way those cores are arranged – how they are divided into quantum gates and measurements.
“The arrival of the ‘Eagle’ processor is a major step towards the day when quantum computers can outperform classical computers at meaningful levels,” said Dr. Darío Gil, Senior Vice President, IBM and Director of Research. “Quantum computing has the power to transform nearly every sector and help us tackle the biggest problems of our time. This is why IBM continues to rapidly innovate quantum hardware design, build ways for quantum and classical workloads to empower each other, and create a global ecosystem that is imperative to the adoption of quantum computing.”
Applications for quantum computing - now accelerated with IBM’s Eagle – can be found anywhere from machine learning optimizations; materials and molecule modelling (essentially covering almost all elements of life, from molecular gastronomy to engineering materials and substrates); to drug and energy industry research fields. There now exists a quantum computer that can solve computational problems no classical computing system can crack. At least, not before the Universe were to die out - twice over, in some cases. Unfortunately, the Eagle is still only available as an exploratory device on the IBM Cloud, via its IBM Quantum Network initiative.
IBM’s Eagle naturally builds upon design decisions from the company’s previous achievements. It follows the 65-qubit Hummingbird (2020) and the 27-qubit Falcon processor from 2019, and takes lessons learned from both those architectures to achieve even more complex quantum circuits than were ever possible before. While qubits can be looked at as the equivalent of your laptop’s cores, quantum circuits represent the way those cores are arranged – how they are divided into quantum gates and measurements.
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