IBM Corp. today revealed its expected roadmap for building the world’s first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer, which would enable scaling up quantum computing for real-world practical results.

The technology giant said it expects to be able to deliver the platform in 2029. The new computing system, dubbed IBM Quantum Starling, will be built at the company’s campus in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is expected to perform 20,000 times more operations than today’s quantum computers.

According to the company, this new platform would require the memory of more than a quindecillion of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, that’s a number equal to a 1 with 48 zeros after it.

“IBM is charting the next frontier in quantum computing,” said Chief Executive Arvind Krishna. “Our expertise across mathematics, physics, and engineering is paving the way for a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer — one that will solve real-world challenges and unlock immense possibilities for business.”

Problems that can take a classical computer months or years to solve, a quantum computer can solve in minutes. That makes them ideal for working on problems such as drug discovery, genetics, and materials science. Quantum processors use qubits, or quantum bits, a fundamental unit of information similar to a bit in classical computing.

However, unlike bits, which can represent a 1 or a 0, a qubit can also exist in a superposition, or both states simultaneously, meaning it can be both a 1 and a 0. They can also be entangled, or connected to one another, for certain computational tasks.

The key challenge quantum computers face is that qubits are fragile. The slightest noise — caused by vibration, changes in heat, magnetic fields or any other interference — and a qubit will lose its information. That can generate errors and faults during computation.

To resolve this problem, quantum computing manufacturers have created logical qubits, an error-correcting quantum computing unit that stores a single qubit’s worth of quantum information. It’s made of multiple physical qubits working together to monitor each other for errors.

The challenging issue that quantum computers face is that qubits are fragile. The slightest noise caused by vibration, changes in heat, magnetic field or any other interference and a qubit will lose its information. This causes errors and faults during computation.

To resolve this problem, quantum computing manufacturers have created logical qubits, an error-correcting quantum computing unit that stores one qubit’s worth of quantum information. It’s made of multiple physical qubits working together to monitor each other for errors.

IBM already operates a large, global fleet of quantum computers and released a new Quantum Roadmap that outlines its intent to build out practical quantum solutions. The company’s most recent IBM Heron, a 156-qubit quantum processor, released in 2024, demonstrated high fidelity with error-correction.

The company said Starling will be able to access the computational power required to solve monumental problems by running 100 million operations using 200 logical qubits. The company intends to use this as the foundation for IBM Blue Jay, which will be capable of executing 1 billion quantum operations over 2,000 logical qubits.

To reach the fault-tolerance needed for large scale, the company revealed in its roadmap that it will build new architectural components to assist with correcting errors in real-time to create exceptional fault-tolerance. This includes “C-couplers,” that connect qubits over longer distances within Quantum Loon, a processor expected this year.

Another processor, IBM Kookaburra, expected in 2026, will be the company’s first modular processor design to store and process encoded information that will combine quantum memory with logic operations, a basic building block for scaling fault-tolerant systems beyond a single chip.

In 2027, IBM Quantum Cockatoo will entangle two Kookaburra modules using “L-couplers” to link quantum chips together like nodes in a larger system, marking the final advancement toward building Starling in 2029.

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