Name: IBM Unveils Groundbreaking Quantum Computing System
Uploaded: 2019-01-08
Duration: 6 min 29 s
Description: The Q System One is the first quantum system to consolidate thousands of components into a glass-enclosed, air-tight environment built specifically for business use.

My name is Bob Suter. I work at IBM research and I'm the vice president for Quantum Computing strategy and ecosystem. That is IBM Q Quantum Computing uses a radically new type of computing really from the ground up that we hope will be able to solve some problems that will be completely intractable for classical computers like your laptop or your smartphone. We're sitting here today in IBM research headquarters. We have more quantum computers here than the entire rest of the world combined. We really run the gamut from worrying about the fundamental science and engineering of the chip to thinking about the best way these integrated systems will work with clients and the work flows they have today. The most essential part of the quantum computer, the chip, is maybe 1 / 1, 000 or 1 / 10, 000 the size of everything else that you have to build. There's the enclosure. There's the refrigeration. There's the quality of the electronics. There's how you make it available on the internet. Quantum computers are extremely sensitive and are prone to interference of really any sort of type. If I were to raise the temperature too much or even if I were just to shake it, it would affect the electronics feeding into the chip itself and cause a little bit of instability In how we program those devices. We don't just think about one quantum computer in isolation. What would it look like to put a series of quantum computers into what used to be called a data center, but I'll call a quantum computation center. How do we make those quantum computers work together with the systems they already have, or maybe [ UNKNOWN ] on the cloud as well. So what we're announcing today is an integrated system that is state of the art in every way regarding its infrastructure, in terms of the quality of the chip It's a fourth generation 20 cubic chip. The quality of the electronics, quality of the refrigeration, and the way it would possibly integrate into a future quantum computation center. When you approached this quantum computer, first you'd see this very large, elegant nine foot by nine foot glass. You see the actual Quantum computer, the Cryostat in the middle. Inside there it gets extremely cold and we bring it down close to absolute zero. When you put a Quantum computer out on, let's say The Cloud You want consistency, and consistency goes from the chip but all the way up to the environment in which the quantum computers help. So we have maximized all elements of the quantum computing system within that glass case. When we conceived the idea of this new, integrated quantum computing system, we knew we had to go to industrial designers. We could handle the technology, but we wanted state- of- the- art design to complement the actual hardware that we would create. So, one example is the glass We want to go beyond in Milan to design this. Go beyond design the cases, that's around the Monalisa, as well as The Crown Jewels in London. This is half inch borosilicate glass. It is built within a tolerance of one millimeter When it closes, the entire air system, the temperature control system leads to a far more stable operating system. The outer frame is completely separate from the inner frame. Why do we do that? Reduce vibration. That glass reduces any sort of Temperature changes when someone opens the door or there is any sort of radio frequency interference, noise that is coming through the room as well. And so we have taken all the [ UNKNOWN ] components which we have individually optimize from technological perspective and from a design perspective. Instead of taking days or weeks to bring a system down, bring it back up, we can now do it in hours. IBM has long been interested in design. In the late 1950's, we commissioned Eliot Noyes, who was a well- known designer. To really look around at the products that IBM was creating to make them beautiful but make them highly functional. There was a belief that really good, really elegant design could build upon Really excellent technology as well. But if we look back to those early 1960s, we see beautiful shots, the systems, the design, the colors, the dimensions really led, I think, to the acceptance and the growth Of IBM mainframes, IBM 360 computers at that time. And I think that's really the hallmark of what we're doing in IBM Q, the best technology that people will want to use, want to learn more about. Today we are in the quantum ready phase so I want to be very careful about saying this. There is nothing today that you can't do on a quantum computer that you can't otherwise do on a classical computer but because quantum computing is very new and different we have to educated people. People have to get in there and learn about this entirely new programming model Now we estimate, in about three to five years, we will move to what we call quantum advantage, and that's a time when we can say right here, from this industry, quantum computing can do significantly better than what we know how to do classically. I think this new system, this new integrated system, is going to really be the blueprint For a lot of what we do in this next phase of being quantum ready and preparing to show real quantum advantage. Every quantum computing system that we build is better than the last, but this, we think, is gonna be an architecture that carries us through the next few years. [ MUSIC ]

IBM Unveils Groundbreaking Quantum Computing System

The Q System One is the first quantum system to consolidate thousands of components into a glass-enclosed, air-tight environment built specifically for business use.