‘This new system will help you do more quantum computing, faster’: IBM says its Nighthawk r2 quantum processor marks a step change in compute capability

IBM is opening up its most complex quantum processor to researchers, claiming it can solve quantum advantage-level problems ten times faster than its current best model and with no loss in accuracy.

With 120 programmable qubits and a new high-speed qubit reset architecture, Nighthawk r2 is capable of executing over 100,000 circuits per second – 25 times the circuit throughput of IBM’s existing Quantum Heron fleet.

It's already demonstrated accurate observable estimation on circuits containing more than 7,500 gates, according to the firm.

The increase in speed comes thanks to Nighthawk r2's ability to address a longstanding bottleneck in quantum computing: reducing the time needed for qubits to 'reset' between computations.

Previous generations of IBM Quantum processors, including Heron, have managed the reset through a technique powered by dynamic circuits and called conditional reset.

The processor measures the state of a qubit and, if it's found to be in the |1⟩ state and applies a bit flip gate – specifically a π-pulse – that flips the qubit back to the ground state.

However, this technique is limited by the accuracy of measurement, and can't reset qubits that have leaked outside the computational state, meaning a delay of hundreds of microseconds between circuit executions.