Ibm More Certain Of New Quantum Computer By 2029 Upi

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 4, 2025, 6:41 PM

ibm more certain of new quantum computer by 2029 upi

June 10 (UPI) -- IBM on Tuesday revealed its map to the development of its large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer styled as "Quantum Starling." The Quantum Starling, to be built at IBM headquarters in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., will be part of IBM's new Quantum Nighthawk processor set for release later this year. "IBM is charting the next frontier in quantum computing," IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna said Tuesday. The Nighthawk is set to replace the Quantum Heron processor, the company said in a blog post. The Nighthawk, meanwhile, runs at 5,000 gates like the Heron with plans to boost it to 15,000 gates within the next three years. A quantum gate is a basic operation on a qubit, the basic unit of quantum information.

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, New York – November 12, 2025 – At the annual Quantum Developer Conference, IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled fundamental progress on its path to delivering both quantum advantage by the end of... “There are many pillars to bringing truly useful quantum computing to the world,” said Jay Gambetta, Director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow. “We believe that IBM is the only company that is positioned to rapidly invent and scale quantum software, hardware, fabrication, and error correction to unlock transformative applications. We are thrilled to announce many of these milestones today.” IBM Quantum Computers Built to Scale Advantage IBM is unveiling IBM Quantum Nighthawk, its most advanced quantum processor yet and designed with an architecture to complement high-performing quantum software to deliver quantum advantage next year: the point at which a quantum...

IBM researcher holds IBM Quantum Nighthawk chip (Credit: IBM) IBM says that the wider quantum computing community will confirm quantum advantage by the end of 2026 and fault-tolerant quantum computing by 2029. IBM also said that it has doubled speed of chip development, shifted to 300-millimeter wafers and boosted the physical complexity of its quantum chips by a factor of 10. The company made both statements at its annual Quantum Developer Conference in New York. “We believe that IBM is the only company that is positioned to rapidly invent and scale quantum software, hardware, fabrication, and error correction to unlock transformative applications," Director of IBM Research Jay Gambetta said... "We are thrilled to announce many of these milestones today.”

The new IBM Quantum Nighthawk is IBM’s most advanced processor yet. It should be available to IBM quantum users via the cloud and on site systems by the end of this year, a company representative confirmed with me. Nighthawk will have 120 qubits connected by 218 tunable couplers, a 20% jump in connectivity over its predecessor, IBM Heron. Nighthawk’s new design will enable 30% more complex quantum circuits while maintaining low error rates. The quantum computer, called Starling, will use 200 logical qubits — and IBM plans to follow this up with a 2,000-logical-qubit machine in 2033 When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Here’s how it works. IBM scientists say they have solved the biggest bottleneck in quantum computing and plan to launch the world's first large-scale, fault-tolerant machine by 2029. The new research demonstrates new error-correction techniques that the scientists say will lead to a system 20,000 times more powerful than any quantum computer in existence today. In two new studies uploaded June 2 and June 3 to the preprint arXiv server, the researchers revealed new error mitigation and correction techniques that sufficiently handle these errors and allow for the scaling... Reporting by Stephen Nellis; Editing by Leslie Adler Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

June 10 2025 IBM made a landmark announcement outlining a clear path to build the world’s first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer by the year 2029. Codenamed IBM Quantum “Starling,” this planned system will leverage a new scalable architecture to achieve on the order of 200 logical (error-corrected) qubits capable of executing 100 million quantum gates in a single computation. IBM’s quantum leaders described this as “cracking the code to quantum error correction” – a breakthrough turning the long-held dream of useful quantum computing from fragile theory into an engineering reality. IBM used the occasion of quantum computing roadmap update to declare that it now has “the most viable path to realize fault-tolerant quantum computing” and is confident it will deliver a useful, large-scale quantum... The centerpiece of this plan is IBM Quantum Starling, a new processor and system architecture that IBM says will be constructed at its Poughkeepsie, NY facility – a site steeped in IBM computing history. Starling is slated to feature about 200 logical qubits (quantum bits protected by error correction) spread across a modular multi-chip system, rather than a single huge chip.

According to IBM, Starling will be capable of running quantum circuits with 100 million quantum gate operations on those logical qubits. For context, that is orders of magnitude beyond what today’s noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) processors can reliably do. IBM emphasizes that achieving this will mark the first practical, error-corrected quantum computer – a machine able to tackle real-world problems beyond the reach of classical supercomputers, thanks to its scale and reliability. A core theme of IBM’s announcement is the transition from today’s “fragile, monolithic” chip designs toward modular, scalable, error-corrected systems. Up to now, IBM (and most industry players) built quantum processors on single chips with qubits laid out in a planar array (IBM’s 127-qubit Eagle and 433-qubit Osprey chips are examples). These monolithic chips are limited in size and are not error-corrected – more qubits tend to introduce more noise.

IBM’s new approach with Starling is modular quantum hardware: multiple smaller chips or modules will be interconnected via quantum links, allowing qubits in different modules to interact as if on one chip. IBM previewed this modular design with its IBM Quantum System Two infrastructure and experiments like the “Flamingo” coupler that demonstrated microwave links between chips. By distributing qubits across replaceable modules connected quantumly, IBM can scale to much larger qubit counts than a single chip can support. Crucially, this modularity is paired with long-range entanglement – qubits on different chips can be entangled through couplers, overcoming the short-range connectivity limitations of a 2D chip lattice. IBM’s 2025 roadmap calls for a stepwise implementation of this modular architecture: for example, IBM Quantum “Loon” (expected in 2025) will test the new inter-chip couplers and other components, followed by Kookaburra (2026) to... All these lead up to Starling as the first full-scale fault-tolerant system in 2028–2029.

In short, IBM is moving from building bigger single chips to building better systems of chips – a modular quantum compute unit that can be expanded piece by piece. Perhaps the most significant technical breakthrough underpinning IBM’s plan is its quantum error correction (QEC) scheme. Rather than the well-known “surface codes” used by others (which arrange qubits in a 2D grid with local redundancy), IBM is betting on quantum low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes – specifically a family of codes... In simple terms, QEC works by encoding one “logical” qubit of information into many physical qubits, so that if some of the physical qubits get corrupted by noise, the logical information can still be... Surface codes typically might need on the order of ~1,000 physical qubits to encode 1 logical qubit at an error rate suitable for large algorithms. IBM’s new LDPC-based code is far more resource-efficient: for example, one instance encodes 12 logical qubits in 288 physical qubits (a [[144,12,12]] code), achieving the same error suppression as surface code but with an...

This is a game-changer for scalability – it means far fewer physical qubits are required to achieve a given computing capability. IBM’s Vice President of Quantum, Dr. Jay Gambetta, boldly stated, “We’ve cracked the code to quantum error correction”, describing the new architecture as “an order of magnitude or more more efficient” than surface-code-based approaches. By combining these LDPC codes with the modular hardware (which provides the long-range connectivity the codes require), IBM’s “bicycle architecture” can create logical qubits that are robust against errors without impractical overhead. The bottom line: IBM’s Starling will use error-corrected logical qubits from day one, not just raw physical qubits. IBM believes this development cracks the last big scientific hurdle and that nothing fundamentally unknown remains – it’s now a matter of engineering scale and integrating the system.

Overall, IBM’s June 2025 news marks a pivot point in quantum computing. The company has publicly committed to a deadline – a 200-logical-qubit fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029 – and backed it up with a detailed roadmap of intermediate milestones and a stack of research results... They are moving beyond incremental qubit count increases toward a full stack redesign: new codes, new chips, new interconnects, new cryogenic infrastructure, and co-designed software (IBM’s updated Qiskit Runtime and error mitigation tools were... This cohesive effort has led analysts to note that IBM appears to have “solved the scientific obstacles to error correction” and now holds “the only realistic path” toward building such a machine on the... In the next section, we’ll analyze what this breakthrough means for the wider industry and, critically, for cybersecurity experts who worry about quantum threats to encryption. IBM researchers have unveiled an ambitious plan to construct the world’s first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer, named Starling, by 2029.

The system, housed at IBM’s R&D hub in Poughkeepsie, New York, will harness 10,000 physical qubits to support 200 logical qubits, enabling 100 million quantum operations — a feat 20,000 times more powerful than... This milestone promises to unleash quantum computing’s potential for solving problems beyond classical computational reach, from drug discovery to logistics optimization. IBM’s breakthrough centers on quantum low-density parity check (LDPC) codes, a novel error-correction paradigm that addresses the field’s most persistent challenge: scaling qubits without compounding errors. By drastically reducing the ratio of physical qubits required to protect logical qubits, LDPC codes allow IBM to scale hardware nine times more efficiently than prior methods. Company leaders confirm “the science has been solved” for achieving fault tolerance, making future quantum scaling purely an engineering challenge. Quantum computing has long been hampered by “noise” intrinsic to qubits, which degrade operational accuracy as systems grow.

Early error-correction efforts relied on surface codes—a method that required a thousand physical qubits per logical qubit, rendering large-scale systems impractical. IBM’s LDPC advance slashes this ratio, requiring just 50 physical qubits per logical qubit, letting systems scale exponentially. The company’s path to Starling builds on over a decade of incremental progress. Its Heron architecture (2023) debuted 127-qubit chips with improved coherence, while the 2024 Flamingo chip introduced long-range qubit couplers. Yet these gains remained outpaced by error rates stymieing quantum algorithms. The LDPC-based bicycle code, first unveiled in IBM’s 2024 Nature paper, finally provides the mathematical framework for stable, large-scale computing.

IBM’s LDPC codes work like a precision algorithm for quantum error correction (QEC). The system encodes logical qubits across physical qubits in groups called “gros,” each containing 144 data qubits and 144 syndrome checks. These “checks” identify errors by comparing qubit states against predefined parity patterns, akin to how classical computers detect corrupted code. June 10 (UPI) — IBM on Tuesday revealed its map to the development of its large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer styled as “Quantum Starling.” The Quantum Starling, to be built at IBM headquarters in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., will be part of IBM’s new Quantum Nighthawk processor set for release later this year. “IBM is charting the next frontier in quantum computing,” IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna said Tuesday.

The Nighthawk is set to replace the Quantum Heron processor, the company said in a blog post. The Nighthawk, meanwhile, runs at 5,000 gates like the Heron with plans to boost it to 15,000 gates within the next three years. A quantum gate is a basic operation on a qubit, the basic unit of quantum information.

Ibm More Certain Of New Quantum Computer By 2029 Upi

People Also Search

June 10 (UPI) -- IBM On Tuesday Revealed Its Map

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, New York – November 12, 2025 – At

IBM Researcher Holds IBM Quantum Nighthawk Chip (Credit: IBM) IBM

The New IBM Quantum Nighthawk Is IBM’s Most Advanced Processor

Here’s How It Works. IBM Scientists Say They Have Solved