IonQ, a trapped ion quantum computing startup, today announced the launch of its latest quantum computer, which features what IonQ calls "32 perfect qubits with low gate errors".
Using IBM's preferred quantum benchmark, IonQ expects to achieve a quantum volume of 4,000,000. This is a huge increase over the double-digit quantum volume numbers that IBM itself recently announced and is a rather extraordinary claim from IonQ, as that would make its system the most powerful quantum computer ever made.
The (well-funded) company has never used this metric before. Through a spokesperson, IonQ also noted that it doesn't necessarily think quantum volume is the best metric, but as the rest of the industry is using it, it has decided to release this number. The company claims that its ability to achieve 99.9% fidelity among qubits has enabled it to achieve this breakthrough.
"In a single generation of hardware, we went from 11 qubits to 32 qubits, and more importantly, we improved the fidelity required to use all 32 qubits," said Peter Chapman, CEO and President of IonQ . "Depending on the application, customers will need between 80 and 150 qubits and ultra-high fidelity logic gates to see the quantum advantage. Our goal is to double or more the number of qubits every year. With two new generations of hardware already in the works, companies that don't work with Quantum run the risk of being left behind. "
It's worth noting that IonQ's trapped ion approach is quite different from IBM's (or D-Wave for that matter) which uses a very different technique. This makes it difficult to compare raw qubit counts between different suppliers. However, the quantum volume metric is meant to make comparing these systems easier.
"The new system we are implementing today is capable of doing things that no other quantum computer has been able to achieve, and more importantly, we know how to continue making these systems much more powerful going forward," said the co. - IonQ founder and chief scientist Chris Monroe. "With our new IonQ system, we expect to be able to code more qubits to tolerate errors, the holy grail for scaling quantum computers in the long term."
Using new error correction techniques, IonQ believes that only 13 qubits will be needed to create a "near perfect" logical qubit.
For now, IonQ's new system will be available as a private beta and it will be interesting to see if its early adopters back up the company's claims (unsurprisingly given the scale of IonQ's claims, there is some skepticism at all. inside the quantum computer community). Later, the company will make it available through partners like Amazon with its Braket service and Microsoft Azure Quantum Cloud.