IBM says quantum computing will hit ‘inflection point’ in 2029

IBM announced its 1,121-qubit “Condor” quantum computing processor on December 4th. This is the company's largest by qubit count and is the world's most advanced gate-based and most advanced quantum system.

Alongside the new chip, IBM also released an updated roadmap and more information about the company's planned efforts in the quantum computing space.

Condor quantum processor

The 1,121-qubit processor represents the top of IBM's flagship roadmap. It will be preceded by the 433-qubit “Osprey” processor in 2022 and the 127-qubit “Eagle” processor in 2021.

In quantum computing terms, a quantum count is not so much a measure of power or ability as potential. While more qubits should theoretically lead to more capable systems eventually, the industry's current focus is on error correction and fault tolerance.

Currently, IBM considers its experiments with 100-qubit systems to be the status quo, with much of the current work focused on increasing the number of quantum gate processors.

“For the first time, we have hardware and software capable of providing an unknown a priori answer to scale quantum circuits with 100 qubits and 3,000 gates,” Jay Gambetta, vice president of Quantum Computing, said in a recent blog post.

2029: Quantum Inflection Point

Gates, like qubits, are a measure of the usefulness of a quantum system. When a processor can implement more gates, more complex tasks can be performed by the system. According to IBM, at the scale of 3,000 gates, 100-qubit quantum systems are now computing devices.

According to the blog post, the next major “tipping point” will be in 2029 with what IBM calls “Starling” processors that will execute “100 million gates over 200 qubits.”

“This will be followed by Blue Jay, which will be able to execute 1 billion gates on 2,000 qubits by 2033,” Gambetta wrote.

Related: IBM brings ‘utility-scale' quantum computing to Japan as China and Europe struggle to compete