Big Blue IBM announced at the recent "Annual Quantum Developers Conference" important progress in innovations such as achieving quantum superiority by the end of 2026 and launching a fault-tolerant quantum computer in 2029. Jay Gambetta, D...
Big Blue IBM announced at the recent "Annual Quantum Developers Conference" important progress in innovations such as achieving quantum superiority by the end of 2026 and launching a fault-tolerant quantum computer in 2029. Jay Gambetta, Director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow, said that for quantum technology to be truly used by the world, many efforts need to go hand in hand. IBM is the only company that can rapidly innovate and simultaneously develop quantum software, hardware, manufacturing and error correction technologies to realize practical quantum applications.
IBM announced the launch of the most advanced quantum processor to date, IBM Quantum Nighthawk (codename: Nighthawk), which will be paired with efficient energy quantum software to achieve quantum superiority in 2026. IBM Quantum Nighthawk is expected to be available by the end of 2025. The IBM Quantum Nighthawk has 120 qubits, with 218 next-generation tunable couplers connecting the four closest qubits to form a square lattice. More than 20% more couplers than the previous IBM Quantum Heron. The increased connectivity of qubits allows users to execute circuits with a 30% increase in complexity while maintaining low error rates.
IBM stated that this architecture supports up to 5,000 two-qubit gates, which is a key entanglement operation in quantum computing and is suitable for topics that require high computing power. The next version of Nighthawk is expected to support 7,500 dual-qubit gates by the end of 2026 and 10,000 in 2027. Nighthawk-based systems are expected to support 15,000 dual-qubit gates by 2028, connecting 1,000 or more qubits via long-distance couplers first demonstrated on experimental quantum chips in 2024.
IBM also expects that the first community-validated quantum advantage cases will be announced by the end of 2026. To promote rigorous verification and advance the best quantum and traditional computing methods, IBM and Algorithmiq, Flatiron Institute and BlueQubit are contributing the latest innovations to an open community-led quantum advantage mechanism for systematic review and verification around the world. The above-mentioned tracking mechanism of quantum advantage currently supports three experimental projects, aiming to study the application of quantum advantage in observable estimation, variational problems, and problems with efficient classical verification. IBM encourages the global quantum community to contribute innovations to this mechanism and engage in two-way communication to find the best ways to achieve quantum advantage.
To achieve proven quantum advantage on new quantum hardware, developers need software that can highly control circuits and use high-performance computing (HPC) to reduce errors in operations. IBM Qiskit is the world's most efficient quantum software stack developed by IBM. By enhancing dynamic circuit capabilities, Qiskit gives developers unprecedented control: a 24% improvement in accuracy at a scale of over 100 qubits. Qiskit also adds a new run model that enables fine-grained control and C-API, improving HPC-driven error elimination and reducing the cost of achieving accurate results by more than 100 times.
▲ IBM announced the latest quantum R&D and innovation roadmap for 2025; the quantum processor Nighthawk will be released at the end of 2025; the experimental quantum processor Loon demonstrates the basic components required for a fault-tolerant quantum computer.
IBM pointed out that as quantum computers become more mature, the research direction of the global quantum community is expanding into the fields of high-performance computing and science. IBM provides Qiskit with a C++ interface supported by C-API, allowing users to perform native programming for quantum computing in existing high-performance computing environments. IBM continues to lead in advanced circuit operations capabilities, including dynamic circuits and increased control over circuit operations to reduce errors. IBM plans to expand Qiskit in 2027 with computational libraries in areas such as machine learning and optimization to more effectively study and solve basic physics and chemistry problems such as differential equations and Hamiltonian simulations.
In addition, IBM aims to launch the world's first large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer in 2029. Therefore, IBM also launched the IBM Quantum Loon (codename: Loon) experimental processor, demonstrating for the first time that IBM has all the key processor components needed to develop fault-tolerant quantum computing. A new architecture will be demonstrated in IBM Loon to develop and scale the components needed for practical-grade, energy-efficient quantum error correction. IBM demonstrated the innovations it intends to incorporate into Loon, including the introduction of multiple high-quality, low-loss routing layers that provide paths for longer on-chip connections (or "c-couplers"), going beyond nearest-neighbor couplers to physically connect distant qubits on the same die, and technology to reset qubits between operations.
IBM has also improved another key capability in developing fault-tolerant quantum computing, which is to use traditional computing hardware to accurately decode errors in real time (less than 480 nanoseconds) with qLDPC codes. This project achievement was completed one year ahead of schedule. Paired with Loon, this demonstrates the foundation needed to extend qLDPC codes on the high-speed, high-fidelity superconducting qubits that are at the heart of IBM's quantum computers.
In addition to continuously improving the capabilities of its quantum computers, IBM also announced that its 12-inch wafer factory located in the Nanotechnology Park in Albany, New York, will become the main force for manufacturing its quantum wafers. The park's advanced semiconductor manufacturing systems and round-the-clock operation mechanism have accelerated IBM's learning, improvement and extension of its quantum processor functions, allowing IBM to continuously improve the connection capabilities, precision and performance of its qubits. Today, IBM has been able to double the speed of research and development; cut the time it takes to launch each new processor in half; increase the physical complexity of quantum chips by ten times; and explore and conduct multiple research and development projects at the same time.
