Quantum Computing has inspired scientists as well as hardware and software developers and is fundamentally changing the landscape of information technology. Quantum computing systems are built from the bottom up reaching the limits of what can be classically simulated. The IBM Quantum Development Roadmap describes our vision of creating a quantum computing ecosystem delivering quantum applications through the cloud. This requires developing the entire quantum computing stack starting from the qubit and quantum processor technology, control electronics to software, algorithms and applications for quantum computing, implemented in the cloud and integrated with high performance computing. Though today's noisy near-term quantum computing systems are still limited, the roadmap targets to achieve an inflection point benefiting of continuous improvements across the stack driving quantum performance described by more qubits, higher quantum volume and speed.
Quantum Computing has inspired scientists as well as hardware and software developers and is fundamentally changing the landscape of information technology. Quantum computing systems are built from the bottom up reaching the limits of what can be classically simulated. The IBM Quantum Development Roadmap describes our vision of creating a quantum computing ecosystem delivering quantum applications through the cloud. This requires developing the entire quantum computing stack starting from the qubit and quantum processor technology, control electronics to software, algorithms and applications for quantum computing, implemented in the cloud and integrated with high performance computing. Though today's noisy near-term quantum computing systems are still limited, the roadmap targets to achieve an inflection point benefiting of continuous improvements across the stack driving quantum performance described by more qubits, higher quantum volume and speed.
The field of quantum computing has evolved into a large interdisciplinary community where significant resources are invested worldwide. As a result, accelerated progress is achieved and we are at the beginning of a new age of computation, developing programmable quantum systems towards universal quantum computers. Quantum computers promise to solve certain mathematical problems that are intractable to classical computers. Quantum computing systems are built from the bottom up reaching the limits of what can be classically simulated. The IBM Quantum Development Roadmap describes our vision of creating a quantum computing ecosystem delivering quantum applications through the cloud. This requires developing the entire quantum computing stack starting from the qubit and quantum processor technology, control electronics to software, algorithms and applications for quantum computing, implemented in the cloud and integrated with high performance computing. In this presentation the recent developments of our quantum computing systems and the scientific advances that enabled scaling superconducting quantum processors to 127 qubits are presented. Besides scale, also quality and speed will be discussed building the key metric for measuring the performance of quantum computation. Examples of applications where the computational power of quantum computing could make a difference are provided.
The progress of Quantum Computing has significantly accelerated in recent years due to increased resources for research and development across the world. The focus has changed from just building quantum devices to establishing a quantum computing system including software and applications. An overview of the recent advancements of superconducting quantum computing systems is provided including the achievements made to scale processors to 127-qubit and scale up to 4000 qubits in 2025. Three key metrics are defined, scale, quality, and speed to holistically measure performance. The computational capabilities of today's quantum chips can be extended by adding classical resources using circuit knitting techniques to reach quantum advantage.
Abstract Quantum computing leverages fundamental quantum-mechanical phenomena—most notably superposition, entanglement, and quantum tunneling—to perform computations in ways that differ fundamentally from classical digital processing. Compared to conventional computing architectures, quantum systems promise significant reductions in computational time and potentially lower energy consumption for specific classes of problems. These advantages, combined with advances in nanoscale engineering and the slowing of traditional hardware scaling trends such as Moore’s Law, have led to substantial commercial and national-security-driven investments in quantum technologies over the past decade. A major milestone was reached when Google announced the experimental demonstration of “quantum supremacy,” showing that a quantum processor could execute a specific computational task infeasible for a classical supercomputer within practical time constraints. Although the demonstrated problem had no immediate practical application, this achievement marked a crucial step toward the development of quantum systems capable of delivering real-world computational advantages and provided a more precise technical framing of the concept of quantum advantage. Despite the fact that the mathematical foundations, programming models, and principal quantum algorithms were established in the 1990s, quantum computing remained largely confined to a specialized research community for decades. Today, the increasing accessibility of cloud-based quantum hardware calls for a broader dissemination of implementation-oriented knowledge among researchers and practitioners in computer science, software engineering, and related fields. The quantum programming paradigm differs fundamentally from classical programming models and often relies on physical and algebraic notations that may pose barriers to traditionally trained computer scientists. This series of articles provides a self-contained and concise introduction to quantum computing and its core algorithms, with a strong emphasis on practical implementation. Given that real quantum processors—such as those accessible via the IBM quantum ecosystem—are now available as cloud services, experimental validation can be conducted both on simulators and on actual hardware for small-scale inputs. While other platforms such as Rigetti and IonQ also offer cloud-based quantum computing services, this review focuses exclusively on the IBM quantum computing ecosystem.
The concept of quantum computing has inspired a whole new generation of scientists, including physicists, engineers, and computer scientists, to fundamentally change the landscape of information technology. With experimental demonstrations stretching back more than two decades, the quantum computing community has achieved a major milestone over the past few years: the ability to build systems that are stretching the limits of what can be classically simulated, and which enable cloud-based research for a wide range of scientists, thus increasing the pool of talent exploring early quantum systems. While such noisy near-term quantum computing systems fall far short of the requirements for fault-tolerant systems, they provide unique test beds for exploring the opportunities for quantum applications. Here, we highlight an IBM-specific perspective of the facets associated with these systems, including quantum software, cloud access, benchmarking quantum systems, error correction and mitigation in such systems, understanding the complexity of quantum circuits, and how early quantum applications can run on near-term quantum computers.
Abstract Quantum computers represent a transformative frontier in computational technology, promising exponential speedups beyond classical computing limits. IBM Quantum has led significant advancements in both hardware and software, providing access to quantum hardware via IBM Cloud® since 2016 and achieving a milestone with the world’s first accessible quantum computer. This paper explores IBM’s journey in quantum computing, focusing on its contributions to both hardware and software, as well as the development of practical quantum computers. We trace the evolution of IBM Quantum’s processors, from the early canary processors to the milestone of surpassing the 1000-qubit barrier. In addition to these technological strides, we delve into the practical applications of quantum computing, particularly within nine key industries: airlines, banking, healthcare, electronics, life sciences, and more. We also explore IBM Quantum’s case studies and strategic partnerships with organizations such as Boeing, CERN, ExxonMobil, and Cleveland Clinic, which are helping to bridge the gap between theoretical research and real-world applications. Further, we examine the key challenges and solutions in scaling quantum systems and achieving fault tolerance, highlighting IBM’s efforts toward building practical, fault-tolerant quantum systems capable of addressing real-world problems.
Quantum computing is an emerging computational paradigm that uses the principles of quantum mechanics, including superposition, entanglement, and quantum interference, to process information in fundamentally different ways from classical computers. During the last decade, quantum computing has progressed from theoretical research toward experimental and cloud-accessible systems. Recent developments have focused on increasing the number and quality of qubits, reducing gate errors, developing quantum error correction, improving quantum software, and integrating quantum processors with classical high-performance computing systems. Despite significant progress, practical large-scale quantum computing remains challenging because quantum states are extremely sensitive to environmental disturbances, resulting in decoherence and computational errors. Other challenges include limited qubit coherence time, gate fidelity, scalability, cryogenic requirements, quantum error correction overhead, hardware connectivity, programming complexity, and the difficulty of demonstrating useful quantum advantage for real-world applications. Recent developments from major research organizations indicate a shift from simply increasing physical qubit counts toward building reliable logical qubits and fault-tolerant quantum systems. Google has reported progress toward error-corrected logical qubits, while IBM\\\'s roadmap focuses on increasingly complex processors, modular architectures, quantum-classical integration, and fault-tolerant systems. Microsoft is pursuing a topological-qubit approach aimed at scalable quantum computing. This paper reviews the current state of quantum computing, examines major technological and scientific challenges, analyzes current research directions, and identifies future opportunities in drug discovery, materials science, optimization, cryptography, artificial intelligence, finance, and scientific simulation. The study concludes that the most realistic future is likely to involve quantum-centric computing, in which quantum processors work together with classical CPUs, GPUs, high-performance computing systems, and quantum networks rather than completely replacing classical computers.