IBM aims to build the world’s first large-scale, error-corrected quantum computer by 2028
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Summary
IBM has provided a timeline for the development of a quantum computer with significantly more computational abilities than exist currently, hoping to make it available to cloud users by 2029.
The company has started construction of a data centre in Poughkeepsie, New York, to house the computational units of the quantum computer.
The machine, named Starling, will be the first large-scale quantum device to implement error correction, which is the biggest hurdle currently facing the industry.
IBM is competing with other companies, including Google, Amazon Web Services, and smaller start-ups such as California-based PsiQuantum and Boston-based QuEra, to develop the technology.
The current challenge with quantum computing is that the units, called qubits, often make computational errors that accumulate over time and inhibit the accurate performance of the desired algorithms.
IBM’s error correction algorithm will encode a single unit of information in 12 physical qubits, which is a ratio comparable to that of AWS’s Ocelot quantum computer.