A year ago, IBM announced a quantum chip with 127 qubits. At the time, the company made it clear that, in 2022, it would present an even more powerful chip. The promise was fulfilled. This Wednesday (9), the IBM Osprey was announced with incredible 433 quantum bits🇧🇷 What does that mean? That we are closer to solving “impossible” computational problems.
When it comes to quantum computing, the greater the number of qubits (simplification of “quantum bits”), the better. A qubit can take on 0, 1, or a superposition of both values.
The current computation, based on binary logic, makes a bit assume a state represented by 0 or 1, but not both values ​​at the same time.
Qubit logic takes computing to another level. With quantum bits, problems that require hours or days to be solved by a conventional computer, even if powerful, can be solved in a matter of minutes or seconds.
Among them are tasks related to meteorology, space research and advanced simulations. Therefore, it is important that the quantum computer works with a significant number of qubits.
IBM Osprey and its 433 qubits
As IBM Eagle, the company managed to overcome the emblematic barrier of 100 qubits. It was not an easy task. The IBM researchers had to resort to several complex procedures so that the 127 qubits did not interfere with quantum coherence, that is, did not make the system unstable.
It seemed that increasing that number by more than three times in the span of a year would be mission impossible. But IBM did. DarĂo Gil, director of IBM Research, celebrates:
The new 433-qubit ‘Osprey’ processor brings us one step closer to the point where quantum computers will be used to solve previously unsolvable problems.
Such a large number of qubits makes the IBM Osprey the most powerful quantum chip ever developed by the company. IBM itself explains that the amount of conventional bits needed to represent the Osprey exceeds the number of atoms in the known universe.
IBM wants more
The IBM Eagle was announced last year as a quantum chip so powerful it couldn’t even be simulated by a supercomputer. What, then, of the IBM Osprey?
But the company will not stop there. For 2023, IBM expects to announce the Condor, a quantum chip with 1,121 qubits. The following year, it will be the turn of the Flamingo, a system made up of 1,386 qubits.
In 2025, the plan is overcome the barrier of 4,000 quantum bits🇧🇷 To do this, IBM wants to combine three 1,386-qubit systems to create a quantum chip with 4,158 qubits. Does anyone doubt that the company will get there?
Let it be known that we are not just doing an exercise in futurism. THE IBM already has systems based on quantum computing working, like the IBM Quantum System Two.
https://tecnoblog.net/noticias/2022/11/09/ibm-da-salto-gigante-na-computacao-quantica-com-chip-de-433-qubits/