IBM has added an improved quantum computer to its fleet of machines installed at its data center in Poughkeepsie, New York. This processor is named Heron r2 and is an improvement to the predecessor version called Heron r1. The new Heron r2 contains a few more qubits, 156 versus 133, than the previous version. It also has better gate fidelities providing an Error per Layer Gate (EPLG) measurement of 0.4% versus the previous version’s 0.7%.

Besides these two Heron processors, the IBM Cloud also offers 10 additional units of the 127 qubit Eagle processors. However, not only do those Eagle systems have fewer available qubits, but also their gate fidelities and EPLG measures are not nearly as good as those of the Heron family. Still, the company states that all these systems can still operate at a utility-scale and provide results that cannot be achieved by brute-force simulations on a classical computer.

For more about this additional new system at IBM’s Quantum Data Center, you can access a press release posted on their website here.

September 26, 2024