IBM Quantum Nighthawk r3 Targets 10,000 Operations and 1,040 Qubits by 2027

IBM announced IBM Quantum Nighthawk r3, a next-generation processor built to accurately execute 10,000 quantum operations across 520 qubits. The company also plans to link two Nighthawk r3 processors into a single system with more than 1,000 qubits in 2027. "Useful quantum computing hinges on whether results can be delivered with accuracy and speed, both are fundamental," said Jay Gambetta, Director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow.

Nighthawk r2 Delivers Speed for Real-World Workloads

Introduced in September, Nighthawk r2 delivers up to 100,000 samples per second while supporting accurate computations with more than 7,500 quantum operations on 120 qubits. Its high-speed qubit reset technology reduces the time between circuit executions. Clients and partners including E.ON, Algorithmiq, and Q-CTRL have executed 34 billion circuits on Nighthawk r2 to date, reporting performance improvements of up to 19x while maintaining quality needed for scientific computation.

E.ON reported a 15x speedup on Nighthawk r2 in quantum machine learning for energy grid optimization. IBM used Nighthawk r2 for a 12x speedup of an experiment with Oak Ridge National Laboratory that simulated real magnetic materials and produced results consistent with neutron scattering experiments. Quantum Elements and ParityQC are also among partners reporting significant performance improvements on their own Nighthawk r2 workloads.

An experiment with Algorithmiq to simulate a heterogeneous quantum material has been extended to Nighthawk r2, executing circuits 8 times faster than the original experiment on Heron. The new circuits are significantly more challenging for classical computers to simulate, requiring an estimated 240 times more memory to achieve comparable accuracy when using leading classical tensor-network methods.

Nighthawk r3 Scales Toward More Than 1,000 Qubits

Nighthawk r3 is designed to support 10,000 quantum operations on 520 programmable qubits, with 2,034 total physical qubits. It retains r2's square-lattice connectivity and fast operations while introducing 10 chip-to-chip interconnects called l-couplers, designed to connect processors into larger systems. IBM has connected Nighthawk r1 processors using four l-couplers, achieving 99.3 percent quantum state transfer fidelity and progressing toward its 99.9 percent target.

IBM also connected two cryogenic modules into a single system for the first time, reaching operating temperature in under five days and cooling below 15 millikelvin. In 2027, IBM plans to connect two Nighthawk r3 processors into a single 1,040-qubit system.

Quantum Meets Classical on IBM Quantum Platform

IBM Quantum Platform is bringing high-performance classical and quantum computing together into a single managed environment. Users can integrate quantum workflows directly with classical compute from a laptop or a powerful supercomputer, or with HPC and classical resources newly available on the platform. Using the new environment, IBM and RIKEN scientists executed their original sample-based quantum diagonalization workflow roughly 5 times faster while performing 100 times more computations than in the original study.

Cleveland Clinic and RIKEN leveraged the platform to automatically process 608 million samples for modeling biologically relevant structures, 33 times faster than without workflow automation. IBM Quantum Platform also offers pulse-level capabilities for precise control over detecting, understanding, and correcting errors. IBM recently launched a co-design platform for quantum error correction with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and AMD that physically co-locates Nighthawk with ORNL's Umbra High-Performance Computing system, powered by AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs and 5th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs.

Sources: newsroom.ibm.com