IBM launches its most powerful quantum computer with 433 qubits

International Business Machines (IBM) Corp on Wednesday said it launched its most powerful quantum computer to date called the Osprey, a 433-qubit machine that has three times the number of qubits than its Eagle machine announced last year.

The number of qubits, or quantum bits, indicates the power of the quantum computer which uses quantum mechanics, although different quantum computer companies make different claims about the power of their qubits which can be created in many different ways.

Quantum computers are one day expected to speed up specific calculations millions of times faster than the fastest supercomputers today.

Dario Gil, IBM’s director of research, said IBM is still on track to launch a computer with over 1000 qubits but for further scaling was working on a new approach, reports Reuters.

“As we push the limits of the size of the Osprey chip that we’re announcing, if you look at it, it’s really big already. Next year, 1000 is going to be very big,” he said.

“So after that, we have been designing and engineering the whole architecture for quantum computing based on modularity.”

IBM is calling the modular system Quantum System Two, reports Reuters.