IBM aims for quantum computer in 2029, lays out road map for larger systems

By Stephen Nellis

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -International Business Machines on Tuesday said it plans to have a practical quantum computer by 2029, and it laid out the detailed steps the company will take to get there.

Quantum computers tap into quantum mechanics to solve problems that would take classical computers thousands of years or more. But existing quantum computers must dedicate so much of their computing power to fixing errors that they are not, on net, faster than classical computers.

IBM, which also said it aims to have a much larger system by 2033, plans to build the "Starling" quantum computer at a data center under construction in Poughkeepsie, New York, and said it will have about 200 logical qubits. Qubits are the fundamental unit of quantum computing, and 200 qubits would be enough to start showing advantages over classical computers.

IBM is chasing quantum computing alongside other tech giants such as Microsoft, Alphabet's Google and Amazon.com, as well as a range of startups that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in capital.

All of them are tackling the same basic problem: Qubits are fast but produce a lot of errors. Scientists can use some of a machine's qubits to correct those errors, but need to have enough left over for doing useful work.

IBM changed its approach to that problem in 2019 and says it believes it has landed on a new algorithm that will drastically reduce the number of qubits needed in error correction.

In an interview, Jay Gambetta, the vice president in charge of IBM's quantum initiative, said the company's researchers took a different tack than they had historically, when they would work out the scientific theory of an error-correction method and then try to build a chip to match that theory.

Instead, IBM's quantum team looked at which chips were practical to build and then came up with an error-correction approach based on those chips. That has given IBM confidence to build a series of systems in between this year and 2027 that will eventually result in larger systems.

"We've answered those science questions. You don't need a miracle now," Gambetta said. "Now you need a grand challenge in engineering. There's no reinvention of tools or anything like that."

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis; Editing by Leslie Adler)