Oak Ridge National Lab, IBM, and AMD Unveil Co-Design Platform for Quantum Error Correction

At a glance

IBM, the Quantum Science Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US, and AMD have launched a new research platform that uses quantum computers and high-performance computers together. The goal is to scale up quantum error correction (a technology that fixes noise and errors that arise during calculations).

Key points

1. 1

   IBM's 120-qubit quantum processor, Nighthawk, has been installed alongside Oak Ridge's high-performance computer, Umbra.

2. 2

   AMD's graphics processing units (GPUs) and central processing units (CPUs) handle the general computing needed for error correction.

3. 3

   The US Department of Energy's Q competition target is 100 logical qubits and 100,000 difficult operations by the end of 2028.

4. 4

   IBM has so far tested 70 logical qubits and 438 difficult operations, so it needs to increase its operation count about 230 times to reach the target.

Why it matters

For quantum computers to become tools that can solve real scientific problems, error-correction technology must be scaled up, and this platform could help find the way to do that.