IBM's Quantum Computer Completes in 19 Seconds What Could Take a Supercomputer a Century
Researchers say the cloud-accessible processor beat a Frontier-based estimate by a factor of 1.8 trillion in a benchmark for quantum advantage.
- IBM's Nighthawk r2, a 120-qubit superconducting quantum processor, generated 1 million samples in just 19 seconds using a standard cloud workflow. The commercially accessible machine completed a task estimated to require around 110 years on Frontier, one of the world's most powerful supercomputers.
- Tigran Sedrakyan, a theoretical condensed matter physicist at BlueQubit, led the experiment demonstrating quantum advantage on commercially accessible hardware. The research team sought to prove that certain quantum computations remain prohibitively difficult for classical computers to perform.
- Researchers reached the Goldilocks zone at 36 cycles, subjecting 61 qubits to 918 two-qubit gates. Nighthawk r2's dedicated reset mechanism actively drains energy from each qubit, cutting idle time to one microsecond and enabling rapid circuit execution.
- Reproducing the results would require around 110 years on Frontier using a particular tensor-network simulation method. Researchers emphasize this estimate assumes unlimited memory and specific classical algorithms, not a fundamental speed limit for conventional computing.
- Quantum advantage remains a moving target as classical computing researchers frequently discover shortcuts and more efficient algorithms. The preprint findings await peer review, but researchers have released circuits, samples, and analysis code for independent validation.
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The IBM quantum computer was able to generate a million samples, which would have taken supercomputers 100 years.
IBM Quantum Processor Nighthawk r2, completes 19 second task estimated at 110 years in traditional supercomputer
The quantum processor Nighthawk r2, developed by IBM, reached a new milestone in advanced computing by completing a random circuit sampling task in just 19 seconds. The experiment generated a million complex samples, a volume of calculations that, according to researchers' estimates, would take about 110 years to run on the most powerful conventional supercomputer on the planet. During the test, conducted by BlueQubit startup scientists in partn…
IBM's quantum computer has solved a problem in 19 seconds that would take a supercomputer 100 years to solve.
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