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IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

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Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#8
post #3

> IBM Quantum System Two is designed to work with IBM's future 433-qubit and 1,121 qubit processors. what's the smallest useful (as in, 'non-toy', or maybe 'worth buying time on') quantum computer?

If you are a researcher from another field that just wants to contract out the computation of a numerical solution to some chemistry problem infeasible on a classical supercomputer, a million "physical" qubits is a fairly reasonable guestimate.

If you are a quantum computation person developing near term applications, you probably would already start getting excited with a 100 (sufficiently long-lived) qubits.

The "sufficiently long-lived" is the problematic part. Every lab has its own bespoke figure of merit (quantum volume, CLOPS, fidelities, etc). It is basically impossible to compare devices without being a researcher in the field for now. But at some point a novel drug or material will be developed thanks to a quantum computer and then we should really get excited about renting time on these devices.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#9

As someone who knows little about quantum computing, what is the significance of 127-qubits? (as opposed to classical computing's 128 bits, as a reference)

Thus far, only D-Wave has truly scalable control over their qubits. They accomplished that by moving to an entirely different computational regime. Until gate-model efforts find a solution to scalable control, every "we built a bigger chip" announcement is a milestone in microwave engineering.

Re: IBM unveils 127-qubit quantum processor

#10

As someone who knows little about quantum computing, what is the significance of 127-qubits? (as opposed to classical computing's 128 bits, as a reference)

Nothing. It is just how many they were able to manufacture and control reliably. Probably were aiming for some power-of-two number but had a couple of defects.
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