IBM announced that it will launch "Quantum Starling", the world's first large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computer with practical scale, in 2029, code-named "Starling", marking another key step towards commercial and scalable quantum computing.
According to IBM's plan, Quantum Starling will be deployed at the new IBM Quantum Data Center in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA. Its expected computing power is approximately 2 times greater than existing quantum systems and has the potential to break through current hardware bottlenecks.
In order to achieve this performance, theoretically more than 1048The memory resources available on today's most powerful supercomputers.
IBM notes that this fault-tolerant quantum computer will be designed to incorporate hundreds or even thousands of "logical qubits," capable of reliably executing hundreds of millions to billions of computational cycles. This capability will become a key technological pillar for accelerating new drug discovery, materials science, quantum chemistry simulations, and complex optimization problems, laying the foundation for future efficient computing and industrial applications.
In current technology, a "logical qubit" is a key unit for effectively resistant to errors and storing information. It is composed of multiple "physical qubits." These physical qubits work together to detect and correct errors, thereby constructing a logical bit with a lower error rate and long-term stable operation.
IBM emphasizes that the difficulty in building large-scale fault-tolerant quantum systems lies in how to use as few physical qubits as possible to construct more and more reliable logical bits, thereby supporting actual computing tasks. However, to date, there is still no clear and economically feasible way to achieve this goal.
The launch of Quantum Starling marks a significant technological milestone for IBM in addressing these challenges. The project also demonstrates IBM's strong commitment and technological expertise to achieving truly usable quantum computing.
In the next few years, IBM will continue to deepen its research and development in logical bit design, quantum fault tolerance mechanisms, and computing scale expansion, laying the technical foundation for quantum computing to move from the laboratory to mainstream applications, and further promote the maturity and implementation of the entire quantum ecosystem.
