IBM unveils 53-qubit quantum computer

The machine will come with a new processor design and the ability to cut errors rates and interference

IBM has announced a new 53-qubit quantum computer that will go online in mid-October and will be available to clients of its IBM Q Network.

The improved quantum machine is expected to demonstrate exponentially higher performance than its predecessor (a 20-qubit machine) since the performance of quantum computers is thought to improve exponentially with more number of qubits.

In addition to a higher number of qubits, IBM's brand new quantum system will come with many other improvements, including a new processor design, lesser space requirements and the ability to cut error rates and interference.

When launched next month, the new machine will be the largest universal quantum system commercially available for users. It will be part of IBM's new Quantum Computation Centre in New York State.

Google currently has a 72-qubit quantum device, but it not available for outsiders to run experiments on it.

According to IBM, it currently has a fleet of 10 commercially available quantum systems (five 20-qubit systems, one 14-qubit system, and four 5-qubit systems), all equipped with "industry's most powerful hardware" to push quantum computing forward.

By next month, four new systems will join the fleet, including the 53-qubit quantum computer, enabling users to run more complex connectivity and entanglement experiments.

"Our strategy, since we put the very first quantum computer on the cloud in 2016, was to move quantum computing beyond isolated lab experiments conducted by a handful of organisations, into the hands of tens of thousands of users," said Dario Gil, Director of IBM Research.

IBM is currently in a race with companies like Microsoft, Google, Intel, Rigetti Computing, Honeywell, IonQ, and NTT to make efficient quantum computers.

Since 2016, more than 14 million experiments have been run by the researchers on IBM's quantum computers through the cloud, enabling them to publish more than 200 scientific papers on the subject.

Qubits or quantum bits are the fundamental data-processing element at the heart of a quantum machine. Unlike regular binary digits (bits) that are used to store a 0 or 1 on everyday computing machines, qubits can store a combination of both through superposition.

More recently, IBM has introduced a new concept called "quantum volume" to measure the performance of a quantum computer.

The company says it is not a big fan of only counting the number of qubits in quantum machines, simply because a variety of other factors, such as error rate, can degrade the performance of the machine.

The "quantum volume" formula takes into account the number of qubits as well as the error rate.

According to IBM, its five 20-qubit quantum computers have a quantum volume of 16.