IBM expects undisputed quantum advantage next year. Last week, it announced its new Nighthawk quantum computer with 5,000 two-qubit gates and improved error correction.
Many companies — including IBM — this year demonstrated uses of quantum computers that went beyond what was possible with purely classical approaches. But none of these were clear, undisputable demonstrations of quantum superiority, reproducible, and applicable to more than just one cherry-picked use case.
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“The problem is that there aren’t standardized benchmarks for quantum computing yet, making it very hard to validate or disprove advantage claims,” says Gartner analyst Mark Horvath. “Companies often demonstrate quantum advantage on carefully selected problems where they know they’ll perform well, rather than showing consistent superiority across a range of use cases.”
This is like rolling a set of dice 100 times and pointing out the one time it came up snake eyes, he says. Companies don’t show off all the times the dice didn’t show a good result.
Still, some of those results may hold up, says Scott Crowder, vice president of quantum adoption at IBM — including the ones for IBM’s current flagship quantum computer, Heron.
“We’ve got systems now that can run programs you can’t simulate classically, so there’s a lot of plausible claims right now,” Crowder says. Next year, he predicts, the industry will see clear and provable demonstrations of quantum superiority, ones which will hold up under scrutiny.
The quantum computing industry will enter a new, commercially valuable stage of maturity.
New quantum platform
IBM also unveiled its new Nighthawk quantum processor, which takes quantum technology even further.
Nighthawk, which will be commercially available by the end of the year, has 120 qubits, down a bit from the 156 in Heron. But it is built around a new topology, increasing the number of couplers from Heron’s 176 to a new high of 218. It also has a modular design, which will allow IBM to scale it up even further.
Even at release, the system lets enterprises run longer quantum programs than before, with a wider variety of potential applications, says Crowder.
Another breakthrough is its error correction. Last year, IBM demonstrated that it can do error correction on classical computers quickly and cheaply enough to be practical, on off-the-shelf components — specifically, AMD’s FPGA chip — and now it’s commercially available. “And we did it a year early,” added Crowder.
IBM now also has the technology to couple multiple quantum chips together into larger systems. “Nighthawk is going to be the chip that is the basis for building these systems,” says Crowder.
By the end of 2026, Nighthawk’s new modular architecture and advanced error-correction will allow it to support 7,500 gates and get to 10,000 gates in 2027 — and 15,000 in 2028.
The average company won’t see any immediate benefit, says Gartner’s Horvath. “But if you were in charge of a capital markets desk, you might use this,” he says. “If you were in charge of logistics, you might use this to optimize your routes.”
And if you’re in charge of cybersecurity, it might be time to upgrade to quantum-safe encryption, he said. “You need to be on PQC [post-quantum cryptography] by 2030,” he says. “We think that commercial actors will have the ability to start breaking digital signatures by 2032 if the current timelines hold up.”
The announcements demonstrate that IBM, for one, is hitting all the milestones of its quantum roadmap.
“They showed me their original plan for this five years ago and I was pretty skeptical,” Horvath says. “But they hit them, within a few months of where they thought they were going to be. So I take it seriously. There’s lots of things that can slow it down but so far, the track record is pretty good.”
Next up: Loon
In fact, IBM has the successor to Nighthawk, Loon, in the works. Loon is an experimental chip that features a new architecture that allows for even greater scalability. It is “almost out of fabrication,” IBM says, and will be assembled by the end of the year — and will help IBM get to what will be the world’s first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer, IBM predicts, by 2029.
In particular, Loon upgrades Nighthawk’s couplers to C-couplers, which can link even more distant qubits together.
“This is a game-changer,” says Fred Chong, ACM Fellow and professor at the University of Chicago. “The Loon system demonstrates something very important that no other superconducting commercial machine has shown.”
According to Chong, Loon puts a separate layer on the chip, going three-dimensional, allowing connections between qubits that aren’t immediate neighbors.
Even separate chips, the ones contained in the boxes at the base of those giant cryogenic chandelier-shaped refrigerators, can be linked together, says IBM’s Crowder. In fact, that’s already possible with Nighthawk.
“You can think of it as wires going between the boxes at the bottom,” Crowder says. “Nighthawk is designed to be able to do that, and it’ll also be used to connect the fault-tolerant modules in the large-scale fault-tolerant system as well.”
“That is a big announcement for the industry,” says IDC analyst Heather West. “Now we’re seeing ways to actually begin scaling these systems without squeezing thousands or hundreds of thousands of qubits on a chip.”
It’s a misperception that quantum computing isn’t beneficial and can’t be used today. Organizations should already be thinking about how they will use quantum computing, especially if they expect to be able to get a competitive edge from it, West says. “Waiting until the technology advances further could be detrimental because the learning curve that you need to be able to understand quantum and to program quantum algorithms is quite high,” she says.
It’s difficult to develop these skills internally, and it’s difficult to bring them into an organization. And then there’s the time it takes to develop use cases and figure out new workflows. “And there are businesses right now that are seeing some sort of business advantage with quantum systems,” West says.
Even starting with small projects can help organizations gain the knowledge and skill sets they will need, West says. “Then when the industry is ready for more complex use cases, you’re already at that point.”
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