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A modular quantum computer is a bit redundant innit? You know, because a quantum is a discrete unit of something and so is modular? Whatever, I’m smart.
ANYWAY, IBM recently announced their new Heron quantum processor, which is part of a larger effort to build out their System Two architecture. The Heron chip will contain 133 qubits, but more importantly the System Two architecture is designed to combine multiple Heron chips in a modular deployment that includes other critical quantum computing components like classical computing servers and qubit control electronics.
The first iteration of System Two is running in their Yorktown Heights datacenter, with three Heron processors connected in a cryogenically cooled facility. The published roadmap from IBM includes future processors like Flamingo and Kookabura, which I find absolutely delightful. Wow, IBM did a fun thing!
System Two is meant to accommodate these future processors and allow for larger modular configurations. IBM also announced version 1.0 of the Qiskit development kit for quantum computing, to help power these next gen chips. They also threw some GenAI nonsense in at the end, because of course they did. You can’t have a product announcement in 2023 without saying generative AI at least 40 times. So previously awarded points for Kookabura subtracted IBM.
If you’d like to try out the Heron processor yourself, IBM is making it available from their cloud services for the low price of $1.60 per Qiskit runtime second. I’ve seen the documentary Quantumania so I’m pretty sure that works out to $10,000 per second of real time, right?