IBM’s Public Cloud set for 53-Qubit Quantum Computing Boost
IBM is lining up the launch of a 53-qubit quantum computer that it says will be the single largest universal quantum system made available for external access in the industry. That computer will sit alongside some less powerful products as part of IBM’s new Quantum Computation Center in New York that is targeted at providing access to these powerful systems through the cloud.
The center currently holds 10 quantum computing systems. These include five 20-qubit systems, a single 14-qubit system, and four 5-qubit systems. IBM noted that five of those systems have a Quantum Volume of 16, which is a measure of the power of a quantum computer. The center supports more than 150,000 registered users and around 80 commercial clients, academic institutions, and research laboratories.
IBM will increase the number of available systems to 14 over the next month, including the monster 53-qubit system. The company has not yet tested the Quantum Volume for that system. IBM did say the enhancement will provide a “larger lattice and gives users the ability to run even more complex entanglement and connectivity experiments.”
“We iterate and improve the performance of our systems multiple times per year and this new 53-qubit system now incorporates the next family of processors on our roadmap,” explained Dario Gil, director for IBM Research, in a statement.
IBM’s Quantum Leap?
Quantum computers operate under the model that by reducing heat-generating resistance within a chip system that system can perform at a higher level. This is typically done by using superconducting materials to support operational temperatures near absolute zero. When accomplished, this allows those systems to support qubits, which are a two-dimensional version of traditional computing bits that can simultaneously represent “0” and “1” in a computing model.
That low resistance also slashes power consumption and increases server performance that is currently being impacted by a slowing down of Moore’s Law. That observation states that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years.
However, the current price of using such technologies makes it cost prohibitive for enterprises and institutions to widely deploy such quantum computing systems. This is where IBM’s use of cloud connectivity comes into play.
IBM initiated use of quantum computers in its public cloud service in 2016. That service, dubbed IBM’s Quantum Experience – and since shortened to just the Q Experience – tapped into the new technology to drive down the heat generated by traditional computing hardware.
“Our strategy, since we put the very first quantum computer on the cloud in 2016, was to move quantum computing beyond isolated lab experiments conducted by a handful of organizations, into the hands of tens of thousands of users,” Gil explained. “In order to empower an emerging quantum community of educators, researchers, and software developers that share a passion for revolutionizing computing, we have built multiple generations of quantum processor platforms that we integrate into high-availability quantum systems.”
D-Wave is another company trying to ease access to quantum systems. The firm recently created its Ocean software stack that sits on top of the physical quantum computing hardware it provides. This basically allows a developer to use common software models to tap into the quantum computing resources.
Quantum Security Needed
Highlighting the overall power of these quantum computers, IBM last month said that due to the rate of progress in quantum computing, data protected by current asymmetric encryption methods could become insecure within the next 10 to 30 years. This basically means that the computational power of quantum computers will allow a hacker to quickly circumvent current security measures.
To counter this potential, IBM will begin offering quantum-safe cryptography services on its public cloud next year to bolster the security of data and privacy from fault-tolerant quantum computers.
“As quantum systems become more powerful they will also impact information security and will create new opportunities for improving security for data both on-premises and in the cloud,” the company noted in a statement.
The services are based on quantum-safe algorithms that use open standards and open source technology to bolster its transport layer security (TSL) and secure socket layer (SSL) security connections in IBM Cloud services. This will help protect data while it’s in transit within the IBM Cloud.
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