After reaching impressive milestones in 2023, technology giant IBM (NASDAQ: IBM) has announced its quantum computing roadmap with plans to increase the capabilities of its systems tenfold.
In a blog post, IBM has laid out an ambitious 10-year plan for rapid quantum innovation, aiming to bring practical use cases for the emerging technology. The roadmap unveils multiple generations of processors, each building on the technical achievements of others, with a target for 2033.
The roadmap follows the launch of the IBM Condor, a 1,121 qubit quantum processor, which marks a significant innovation milestone for IBM, breaking the 1000-qubit barrier for the first time.
IBM is now gearing up for the mainstream release of Heron, its highest-performing quantum processor, which will serve as the foundation for its hardware roadmap over the next decade.
The company has also outlined plans for several processors to be rolled out in the coming years, leading up to an “inflection point” in 2029 with its Starling processor capable of executing 100 million gates, a significant advancement from Heron’s 5,000 gates.
By the end of the 10-year roadmap, IBM aims to execute 1 billion gates, a nine-order-of-magnitude increase since rolling out its first device in 2016.
“Entering the era of utility opens up new opportunities for enterprises to engage with quantum computing and explore workforce integration,” said IBM.
Despite IBM’s advancements, pundits note a growing innovation trend outside the U.S. and China in other jurisdictions. In late November, IBM installed the first “utility-scale” quantum system outside North America at the University of Tokyo, Japan.
China also faces challenges in quantum computing, with Alibaba shutting down its quantum computing unit to focus on AI, following the U.S. chip embargo, which has impacted China’s quantum research efforts.