10th March 2017 IBM unveils roadmap for quantum computers IBM has announced "IBM Q", an initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computing systems.
IBM has announced an industry-first initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computing systems. “IBM Q” systems and services will be delivered via the IBM Cloud platform. Current technologies that run on classical computers, such as Watson, can help to identify patterns and insights buried in vast amounts of existing data. By contrast, quantum computers will deliver solutions to important problems where patterns cannot be seen because the data doesn’t exist and the calculations needed to answer questions are too enormous to ever be processed by classical computers. IBM is also launching a new Application Program Interface (API) for the “IBM Quantum Experience” enabling anyone with an Internet connection to use the quantum processor (via the Cloud) for running algorithms and experiments, working with individual quantum bits, and exploring tutorials and simulations of what might be possible with quantum computing. In the first half of 2017, IBM plans to release a full Software Development Kit (SDK) for users to build simple quantum applications and software programs. “IBM has invested over decades to growing the field of quantum computing and we are committed to expanding access to quantum systems and their powerful capabilities for the science and business communities,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president of Hybrid Cloud and director for IBM Research. “Following Watson and blockchain, we believe that quantum computing will provide the next powerful set of services delivered via the IBM Cloud platform, and promises to be the next major technology that has the potential to drive a new era of innovation across industries.”
IBM intends to build IBM Q systems to expand the application domain of quantum computing. A key metric will be the power of a quantum computer expressed by the “Quantum Volume” – which includes the number of qubits, quality of operations, connectivity and parallelism. As a first step to increase Quantum Volume, IBM aims to build commercial IBM Q systems with around 50 qubits in the next few years to demonstrate capabilities beyond today’s classical systems, and plans to collaborate with key industry partners to develop applications that exploit the quantum speedup of the systems. IBM Q systems will be designed to tackle problems that are currently too complex and exponential in nature for classical computing systems to handle. One of the first and most promising applications will be in the area of chemistry. Even for simple molecules like caffeine, the number of quantum states in the molecule can be astoundingly large; so complex that all the conventional computing memory and processing power scientists could ever build could not handle the problem. IBM’s scientists have recently developed new techniques to efficiently explore the simulation of chemistry problems on quantum processors and experimental demonstrations of various molecules are in progress. In the future, the goal will be to scale to even more complex molecules and try to predict chemical properties with higher precision than possible with classical computers. Future applications of quantum computing may include: • Artificial Intelligence: Making facets of artificial intelligence such as machine learning much more powerful when data sets can be too big such as searching images or video
“Classical computers are extraordinarily powerful and will continue to advance and underpin everything we do in business and society,” said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president of IBM Systems. “But there are many problems that will never be penetrated by a classical computer. To create knowledge from much greater depths of complexity, we need a quantum computer. We envision IBM Q systems working in concert with our portfolio of classical high-performance systems to address problems that are currently unsolvable, but hold tremendous untapped value.” IBM’s roadmap for scaling to practical quantum computers is based on a holistic approach to advancing all parts of the system. The company will leverage its deep expertise in superconducting qubits, complex high performance system integration, and scalable nanofabrication processes from the semiconductor industry to help advance the quantum mechanical capabilities. The developed software tools and environment will also leverage IBM’s world-class mathematicians, computer scientists, and software and system engineers. "As Richard Feynman said in 1981, ‘…if you want to make a simulation of nature, you’d better make it quantum mechanical, and by golly it’s a wonderful problem, because it doesn’t look so easy.’ This breakthrough technology has the potential to achieve transformational advancements in basic science, materials development, environmental and energy research, which are central to the missions of the Department of Energy (DOE),” said Steve Binkley, deputy director of science, US Department of Energy. “The DOE National Labs have always been at the forefront of new innovation, and we look forward to working with IBM to explore applications of their new quantum systems."
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