IBM Reveals Five Year Quantum Development Roadmap

Every year we get closer to mainstream use of quantum computers. IBM continues its approach to making that a reality with a step-by-step roll out of new quantum hardware and software. Last year, IBM released its plans for a series of computers with ever increasing numbers of qubits (quantum bits) through to 2025. In this most recent announcement, IBM described new capabilities of its quantum computers to compute faster and with new capabilities. In addition, it announced plans to build a software and solution ecosystem around certain problem sets, including natural sciences (chemistry, biology, physics, etc.), optimizations, finance, and machine learning. These are research categories with lots of problems to solve.

Today’s early developers are looking at where to use quantum. What are the problems to solve? These are areas where developers need to decide on today in preparation for new systems and capabilities coming online in the near future. But even at this early phase, quantum has provided business value to some of IBM’s corporate and government customers.

While AI is getting the most attention and venture capital, there are some problems that quantum can solve more effectively than classical (Von Neuman) and AI. While quantum won’t replace classical computing anytime soon, it promises to solve some intractable compute problems. Researchers recently have had access to real quantum computers (IBM opened up its quantum computers 5 years ago), so we are in the very early stages of applying quantum to solve research and industry problems.

In today’s use of quantum computers, a classic computer runs most of the code and then hands off the quantum problem to the quantum computer. Controllers set up the quantum circuits, run the circuit, and return the results. The quantum setup and return consume a lot of time. IBM has introduced the Qiskit Runtime (Qiskit is IBM’s open-source quantum development platform) that can now use local processing to run quantum circuits more efficiently and can lead to a 100x faster performance than without Qiskit Runtime.

IBM Hardware Quantum Circuits Improvements

The figure below shows the three key attributes IBM is focused on improving: Quality, Capacity and Variety. IBM has been working to not only develop more quantum circuit capacity, but also with more capabilities, allowing a broader variety of circuits that can be run on IBM Quantum computers and to run those circuits faster.

With IBM’s Qiskit Runtime, a classic computer near the quantum computer manages the quantum circuit results and any logic decisions, like those in nested loops. Previously, the result would have to travel from the quantum computer, through the cloud, and to the developer’s computer to make decisions on whether to continue to loop. With Qiskit Runtime, execution can be up to 100x faster on looping algorithms, increasing quantum capacity.

Another important improvement to IBM’s quantum computers is the addition of dynamics circuits. With dynamic circuits future execution can be dependent on earlier measurements, which is roughly equivalent to branching execution in classical computer. Dynamic circuit execution is based on mid-circuit measurements.

Also, with dynamic circuits, it is possible to do mid-circuit reset of qubits and therefore ancillary circuits can be reset and reused without resenting the whole circuit, this increases variety of circuits and increasing capacity. This will also lead to better phase estimation execution, an important algorithm for quantum. Dynamic circuits are essential for creating error checking and correction of quantum circuits – leading eventually to fault-tolerant logical qubits.

All these improvements are important for kernel circuit developers – the low-level programming of the quantum computers, roughly equivalent to microcode programming in classical computers. This is programming for the most expert quantum user.

Making Quantum Software Frictionless

IBM also released its roadmap for its quantum software development for the next five years. By 2023 IBM will offer new developer support for “frictionless” development for mainstream programmers using well know languages like Python to keep the develop environment user friendly and foster wider adoption. Ultimately only a quantum function call and results functions (figure below) should be required. This simplifies the developer use, making calling quantum functions no different than classic functions, which is what IBM calls frictionless.

Based on IBM’s roadmap (see below), we can expect that in 2021 it will have faster computing based on Qiskit Runtime availability. In 2022, IBM will have dynamic circuits available. In 2023 the company expects to have over 1,000 qubits. At the same time, it expects it will have circuit libraries and prebuilt quantum runtimes for the frictionless workflows. The goal is to make it seamless to use quantum cloud computers by 2023.

For 2024, IBM is investigating the possibility of error correction. Beyond that, there’s the possibility the high-performance classic computers will enable new quantum capabilities. The key to the next few years will be developing workflows and experiments with combinations of classical (including HPC) and quantum.

Access to Quantum is Essential to Knowing How to Use Quantum

Today’s early quantum developers are looking at where to use quantum to solve difficult problems that are not easily solvable with existing computers, like those that don’t scale linearly. These are areas where developers need to decide on today in preparation for new systems and capabilities coming online.

IBM’s Quantum Network has 140 participating organizations, indicting there’s significant interest in learning and testing quantum computers. IBM is presently operating twenty quantum machines of various qubits and ten are accessible free of charge. Developer activity continues to increase and is now up to two billion circuits run per day.

The progress that IBM is making on tools should increase the accessibility of quantum computing. Eventually, there will be no excuse not to have quantum computing as a tool for solving critical problems. IBM is making steady progression and offers a roadmap for companies to plan against.

_{Tirias Research tracks and consults for companies throughout the electronics ecosystem from semiconductors to systems and sensors to the cloud. Members of the Tirias Research team have consulted for IBM, and other companies throughout the cloud ecosystem.}