The University of Tokyo (UTokyo) and IBM have announced plans to upgrade UTokyo’s IBM Quantum System One with IBM’s 156-qubit Heron quantum processing unit (QPU), significantly advancing the system’s performance. The Heron QPU features a tunable-coupler architecture and delivers improved fidelity and coherence compared to earlier processors, with a 3–4x improvement in two-qubit error rates and a 60% increase in circuit layer operations per second (CLOPS). This marks the third hardware upgrade of UTokyo’s IBM Quantum System One, which began with a 27-qubit Falcon QPU and was later upgraded to a 127-qubit Eagle QPU in 2023.
In a parallel development, UTokyo plans to integrate its IBM Quantum System One with the Miyabi supercomputer, creating a quantum-centric supercomputing platform to support hybrid quantum-classical workloads. Miyabi is operated by UTokyo and the University of Tsukuba through the Joint Center for Advanced High Performance Computing (JCAHPC). This integration is expected to support applications across quantum chemistry, bioinformatics, materials science, high energy physics, and finance, leveraging combined quantum-classical resources to improve the precision of simulations such as quantum observables estimated with neural networks.
This collaboration forms part of the Japan–IBM Quantum Partnership, established in 2019, and serves members of the Quantum Innovation Initiative (QII) Consortium. The consortium, launched in 2020, has produced over 140 research publications using the IBM Quantum System One. UTokyo’s role in Japan’s broader national and regional quantum education efforts includes participation in a trilateral university consortium with South Korea and the U.S., targeting quantum workforce development for more than 40,000 students over the next decade.
Read the full announcement from IBM here.
May 20, 2025
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