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Image source, IBM
IBM’s Eagle processor has doubled the capacity of the previous Hummingbird processor.
“A key milestone on the path to practical quantum computing.”
This is how the IBM company, one of the oldest computer manufacturers, presented its new advanced quantum processor called Eagle.
Computers with these processors could revolutionize computing by taking advantage of the strange world of quantum physics to solve problems that cannot be processed by today’s most advanced computers.
They could be used for a wide range of technological developments, from new materials and medicines until the artificial intelligence.
But so far obstacles in building practical versions have kept quantum computers confined to the laboratory.
And a quantum computing expert says IBM needs to publish more details about Eagle to show if it represents a significant advance.
The quantum world
Quantum computers take advantage of the strange way matter behaves on very small scales.
In classical computers, the unit of information is called a “bit” and can have a value of one or zero. But its equivalent in a quantum system, the “qubit“ (or quantum bit), it can be one and zero at the same time.
This is the concept of superposition, where something can exist in multiple states at once.
To harness its power, multiple qubits must be linked, a process called entanglement. And with each additional qubit added, hethe computational power of the processor doubles.
Solving complex problems, such as figuring out how proteins fold in drug development, or modeling physical processes within complex atoms, requires many qubits.
To bring quantum computing to a practical use, manufacturers must find an easy way to create processors with a large number of qubits (and that they are stable).
This would make it possible to avoid the calculation errors that conventional computers, even the most powerful of today, present.
The new IBM-designed processor has 127 qubits, double that of the previous version, Hummingbird (65 qubits) introduced in 2020, and the Falcon (27 qubits) of 2019. It plans to reach 1,121 qubits in the Condor model of 2023.
Image source, Getty Images
IBM is one of the companies in the global race to create quantum computers for practical uses.
“The arrival of the Eagle processor is an important step towards the day when quantum computers can surpass classical computers in useful applications,” said IBM Senior Vice President and Research Director Darío Gil.
“Quantum computing has the power to transform almost every industry and help us tackle the biggest problems of our time,” he said.
Quantum supremacy
An important step is to demonstrate what has been called “quantum supremacy”, for which there are several competitors.
In 2019, Google said his quantum processor Sycamore de 53 qubits it had for the first time outperformed a conventional computer on a particular task.
Google researchers published the results in the prestigious academic journal Nature.
Image source, Google
Google has also entered the competition of quantum computers.
At the time, IBM scientists questioned some of Google’s figures and its definition of quantum supremacy.
Eagle also faces skepticism.
Professor Scott Aaronson of the University of Texas at Austin said he hopes “see the real details” that can expose its true scope.
In his blog, the quantum computing expert added that the information published so far by IBM lacked the key parameters it used to evaluate its progress.
In 2016, IBM was the first company to put quantum computing in the cloud, opening up access to machines for more users.
* With information from Paul Rincon, BBC News Science editor.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.