IBM Launches New Quantum Computer at Hyde Park Labs

An IBM Quantum System Two quantum computer was unveiled at its temporary home at Hyde Park Labs on November 6, part of ongoing collaboration between IBM, UChicago, the state of Illinois, and the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park (IQMP), the computer’s eventual home.

The first iteration of the Quantum System Two was released in December 2023, powered by the IBM Quantum Heron chip. The Chicago Quantum System Two is powered by the IBM Quantum Nighthawk, the company’s fastest quantum processor, with 120 programmable quantum bits (qubits) and a processing speed of more than 100kHz, about 25 times that of the Heron.

Quantum computing allows computers to run simulations faster and more efficiently than classical computers, and IBM expects their primary use cases to be “modeling the behavior of physical systems and identifying patterns and structures in information.” The Quantum Nighthawk can run one million random-circuit samples, a metric for determining the output of a quantum computer, in 19 seconds, a feat that would take a normal supercomputer more than a century.

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, “[w]hereas two classical bits can be placed in only one combination of states at a time (such as 1 and 0), two qubits can contain a superposition of four combinations of 0s and 1s simultaneously. Three qubits can contain eight combinations; four qubits, 16 combinations and so on. Each additional qubit doubles the number of combinations: an exponential increase.”