IBM on Nov. 16 at its annual landmark event on quantum hardware, software and the growth of the quantum ecosystem, the IBM Quantum 2021 Summit, announced the breakthrough Eagle 127-Qubit Quantum Processor. This processor represents a breakthrough in harnessing the enormous computational potential of devices based on quantum physics (newsroom.ibm.com).
Let's turn back a little bit to history. Quantum computing ideas go back to around 1980, but there was a lot of interest in the 1990s because it became known at that time that a quantum computer could break the strongest cipher, particularly the encryption used to exchange financial and other confidential data - RSA encryption. The essence of these algorithms is based on the fact that multiplying two large numbers is not a difficult task, but decomposing it back into multipliers is much more difficult. However, mathematician Peter Shore was able to solve this problem in 1994 and showed that a quantum computer could do this task much faster than a conventional computer, despite the fact that a quantum computer at the time existed only on paper.
Now a little bit about the differences. So, how quantum computers differ from ordinary computers. The fact is that a quantum computer stores and processes information differently. It is a well-known fact that conventional computers deal with bits, which have only two possible states, either 0 or 1, and the bit jumps from one state to another. As for a quantum bit or qubit, it can be in any of an infinite number of intermediate states, and the transition from one to another or switching between them is seamless. In other words, quantum computers for information transmission and processing use quantum superposition and quantum entanglement phenomena and operate with quantum bits, which, in their turn, can simultaneously take values of both logical zero and logical one, as a result, growth of quantum bits used leads to geometric growth of the number of simultaneously processed values.
Now back to the achievements of IBM. Back in 2019, the company introduced the 27-qubit Falcon processor, followed in 2020 by the 65-qubit Hummingbird processor, and in November 2021 the company introduced the 127-qubit Eagle processor. The Eagle quantum processor is IBM's first processor deployed to store more than 100 working and connected qubits. By comparison, to simulate the operation of such a quantum processor on an ordinary computer would require a total number of atoms greater than the number of atoms in more than 7.5 billion people living on earth.
As noted in a press release from IBM, the increased number of qubits opens up new opportunities, as it will allow users to conduct research at a new level of complexity, such as conducting experiments or running applications such as optimizing machine learning or modeling new molecules and materials for use in various fields, ranging from energy to the process of creating drugs 1.
According to Dr. Dario Gil, IBM senior vice president and director of research, quantum computing can transform almost any sector and can help solve today's most important and big problems, which is why IBM continues to innovate in developing the quantum hardware needed to grow the quantum industry 1.
----1newsroom.ibm.com.