IBM announced, during the conference “Quantum Summit 2021”, the arrival of EAGLE, its processor of 127 qubits and would thus steal the show from the team of the Chinese physicist Pan Jianwei which conceived an identical system but of “only” 66 programmable qubits: Zuchongzhi 2.1. The Sycamore of Google counts him “only” 53 qubits but dates from 2019.

In the global race to quantum computing, two players are fiercely competing for supremacy: the United States and China. France is trying to catch up, the government has allocated 1.8 billion to the rapidly developing sector. Two companies, among them, stand out: Quandela, which promises a first complete photonic computer in 2022, and Pasqal, which is developing a 100-qubit quantum computer by the end of the year, with a goal of 200 to 300 qubits by 2022 and 1000 qubits by the end of 2023.

In the United States, IBM is not the only one interested in quantum computing. Intel, Microsoft, Honeywell, Rigetti Computing and Google are also in the race. But IBM and Google are leading the way and are engaged in a fierce battle, not hesitating to question each other’s advances.

So Google launched Sycamore, its 54-qubit quantum computer in 2019. In 2020, IBM presented Hummingbird, its 65-qubit quantum microprocessor that succeeded Falcon, a 27-qubit processor.

Meanwhile, the Chinese teams of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei designed Zuchongzhi on their side, it is in its third version of 66 qubits (with initially 56 qubits, then 60 qubits).

The Zuchongzhi 2 prototype was announced on October 25 in the renowned physics journal Physics Review Letters. The Chinese teams will not have had much time to savour their feat since, with EAGLE, IBM has almost doubled their best qubit score achieved by a superconductor processor.

Each additional qubit represents a real advance in terms of capacity: unlike conventional computers, whose power increases linearly as they grow, an additional qubit effectively doubles the potential power of a quantum processor.

For IBM’s Bob Sutor, the 100-qubit milestone is more psychological than physical, he also adds:

“With Eagle, we’re demonstrating that we can evolve, that we can start generating enough qubits to put us on the path to having enough computational capacity to solve interesting problems. It’s a stepping stone to bigger machines.”

For Peter Leek of Oxford University, the number of qubits alone doesn’t necessarily equate to performance, there are other metrics that need to be looked at, none of which have been published yet for Eagle.

“It’s definitely positive, it’s nice that they’re doing something with more qubits, but ultimately it only becomes useful when the processor is really working well.”

IBM also revealed its plans for the future, with a 433-qubit Osprey processor planned for 2022, followed by a 1,121-qubit Condor processor in 2023. Quantum System Two, at the concept stage, will later replace Quantum System One as IBM wants to build a modular computer with denser cryogenic systems. The latter are very large and are necessary for the quantum properties of the qubits to manifest themselves. The manufacturer should present the first prototype of Quantum System Two in 2023.

Jay Gambetta, Quantum vice president noted:

“We think of the Condor as an inflection point, a major milestone that will mark our ability to have corrected the mistakes of the past and optimize our devices (to accommodate quantum computing) At the same time, it will be complex enough to explore the potential of quantum advantages – that is, the ability to solve problems more efficiently than with any pre-existing supercomputer.”

Translated from IBM annonce l’arrivée de son nouveau processeur quantique supraconducteur de 127 qubits : EAGLE