IBM's Future Quantum-centric Supercomputing

The technology development in International Business Machines Quantum Roadmap creates a developer tool to provide sophisticated services in future.   

FORMAT CA: The IBM development roadmap envisions a quantum future. The technology doesn't require learning a new language and it deals with the code running separately on a new device. Quantum computing is on the sparkling model shift rooted in the physical law of nature, and could soon revolutionise computing forever.

In September 2020, IBM took the unprecedented step of releasing a hardware roadmap showing a clear pathway to over 1,000 qubits, analysing the challenge along the way and proposing solutions to these challenges. As a scientist, it is not an easy decision to go to the public with a transparent roadmap. Creating the right conditions for quantum computing to transform the broader distributed computing ecosystem within this decade is a gargantuan effort. It incorporates the past 50 years of lessons learned from classical computing to accelerate the integration of quantum and classical systems at an astronomically fast pace. The help of an open-source community’s power and ability to mobilise developers worldwide, plus cloud-native deployment of quantum workloads, to break down any potential barriers and democratise access to this new technology as quickly as possible.

Software development is coordinated since open-source approaches are based on the understanding that an ecosystem of different human needs drives the best outcomes and quantum computing is no different. They expect developers to work in each of three key segments laying the groundwork for those working higher up in the stack. At the lowest level, quantum kernel developers are creating high-performance quantum circuits with timing and pulse-level controls. Quantum algorithm developers rely on these circuits to develop ground breaking quantum algorithms that might provide an advantage over present-day classical computing solutions. Finally, quantum model developers apply these algorithms to real-world use cases to develop quantum models for chemistry, physics, biology, machine learning, optimization, or even finance.

IBM Development Roadmap serves to give each developer segment the tools they need to produce the algorithms, models, and the best circuits while maximising the opportunities for combination. The increased variety of circuits and the capacity of systems to run more circuits more quickly, while developing a platform where quantum developers can work seamlessly in the same integrated cloud-based framework. Workloads with both quantum and classical components will not be forced by origin or the nature of integration and the hybrid cloud will allow these workloads to run everywhere that cloud-native systems run today and in the future.