IBM plans 520-qubit Nighthawk r3 and a two-chip system above 1,000 qubits in 2027
IBM says Nighthawk r3 is being built to run 10,000 operations on 520 programmable qubits, and that two linked r3 chips should form a 1,000-plus-qubit system in 2027.
IBM used its Quantum Developer Conference on November 11 to update its processor roadmap. According to the company’s announcement, its next-generation processor, IBM Quantum Nighthawk r3, will be built to accurately execute 10,000 quantum operations across 520 programmable qubits. IBM said it plans to link two r3 processors into a single system with more than 1,000 qubits in 2027.
What was announced
IBM describes r3 as having 520 programmable qubits and 2,034 total physical qubits. It keeps the square-lattice connectivity of the current Nighthawk r2 and adds 10 chip-to-chip interconnects, which IBM calls l-couplers, intended to join processors into larger systems.
The company also reported usage figures for Nighthawk r2, introduced in September. IBM says r2 delivers up to 100,000 samples per second and supports computations with more than 7,500 operations on 120 qubits, and that clients and partners including E.ON, Algorithmiq and Q-CTRL have run 34 billion circuits on it, reporting speedups of up to 19x over previous IBM processors. These are company-reported figures.
What changed in the plan
Writing for Ars Technica, John Timmer notes that IBM is scaling back the number of Nighthawk processors it intends to link: from nine to two. The total qubit count planned for next year stays the same, but it now comes from fewer, larger chips. Ars also reports that IBM is still aiming for error-corrected quantum computers before the end of the decade.
What to watch
The 10,000-operation figure is a design target for a processor that is not yet available. The milestones to watch are published benchmarks for r3 once it ships, evidence that the l-couplers can link chips without a large loss in quality, and whether the two-chip system arrives on IBM’s 2027 schedule.
Sources
Facts on this page come from the sources below, retrieved by DesignQuantum™.