IBM (NYSE: IBM) recently announced at its Quantum Developer Conference quantum hardware and software major advancements in IBM quantum computers capabilities with record levels of scale, performance, and accuracy.
Qiskit and IBM Quantum Heron, a Dynamic Duo
Using Qiskit, the world’s most performant quantum software, and IBM Quantum Heron, IBM’s current most performant quantum processor, classes of quantum circuits with up to 5,000 two-qubit gate operations can be effectively run. This combo can be used to determine how quantum computers can explore scientific problems across materials, chemistry, life sciences, and high-energy physics.
This accomplishment is part of IBM’s Quantum Development Roadmap, and extends the era of quantum utility:
The combined improvements across IBM Heron and Qiskit can execute certain mirrored kicked Ising quantum circuits of up to 5,000 gates, which is nearly twice the number of gates accurately run in IBM’s 2023 demonstration of quantum utility. This work further extends the performance of IBM’s quantum computers beyond the capabilities of brute-force classical simulation methods. The 2023 utility experiment, published in Nature, demonstrated the speed results in terms of time to process, per data point, which totaled 112 hours. The same experiment, using the same data points, was run on the latest IBM Heron processor and can be completed in 2.2 hours, which is 50 times faster.
With Qiskit, developers can build complex quantum circuits accurately, and fast. This fact is demonstrated through Benchpress, which was used to measure Qiskit across 1,000 tests, primarily from third parties, and was determined to be the highest-performing, most reliable quantum software development kit.
Qiskit services now include generative AI-based capabilities and software from IBM partners:
This includes tools such as the Qiskit Transpiler Service to power the efficient optimization of quantum circuits for quantum hardware with AI; Qiskit Code Assistant to help developers generate quantum code with IBM Granite-based generative AI models; Qiskit Serverless to run initial quantum-centric supercomputing approaches across quantum and classical systems; and the IBM Qiskit Functions Catalog to make services available from IBM, Algorithmiq, Qedma, QunaSys, Q-CTRL, and Multiverse Computing for capabilities such as reducing the performance management of quantum noise, as well as abstracting away the complexities of quantum circuits to simplify the development of quantum algorithms.
Qiskit Unites Quantum and Classical Computing
Qiskit fuels quantum and classical computing and performs parallelized workloads to solve complex problems with performant software. Parts of an algorithm are solved based on whichever architecture can problem solve the best way. Having two options creates better algorithm problem solving abilities than just one type of computing.
RIKEN, a national scientific research institute in Japan, and Cleveland Clinic, a leading academic medical center and biomedical research institution equipped with an on-site and utility-scale IBM Quantum System One, are using IBM’s technology for electronic structure problems useful for chemistry:
These initiatives represent the first steps towards quantum-centric supercomputing approaches to realistically model complex chemical and biological systems, a task historically believed to require fault-tolerant quantum computers.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is incorporating Qiskit to be IBM’s first quantum-centric supercomputing on a university campus:
With performant software, RPI and IBM are aiming to successfully connect workloads across the AiMOS classical supercomputer and IBM Quantum System One, both located on RPI’s campus, into a single computational environment managed by a standard high-performance computing resource manager.
About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. IBM helps clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. More than 4,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely.
