Accessing quantum devices wasn’t easy prior to 2016.  Theorists had to convince hardware researchers at institutions like IBM to help them realize experiments on custom quantum processors. Given the high quality of IBM’s devices, this work strained the small and already-busy IBM Quantum team — so, team leads Jay Gambetta and Jerry Chow decided to put a quantum processor on the cloud. After all, IBM Quantum team members were already remotely accessing the devices on nights and weekends to run experiments. They got started — but they’d need more and better resources, and to prove that there ..read more

Mark your calendar: The Qiskit Global Summer School is back, July 12-23, 2021! Last year, the IBM Quantum team made history by hosting a free, virtual quantum computing crash course for over 4,000 learners. This year, we’re hoping to host another 4,000 students — now with a focus on quantum machine learning (QML). This year’s Qiskit Global Summer School will feature two weeks of live lectures and hands-on laboratory sessions where students can apply what they’ve learned using Qiskit code using the new Qiskit machine learning application module. Lectures will begin with an introduction to quant ..read more

When we launched Qiskit four years ago, our primary goal was to provide an open-source framework with an interface that helped people create and run programs on state-of-the art quantum computers. We were looking to introduce quantum computing to a wider audience, inviting programmers with varying levels of experience to experiment on our cloud-based systems, and to envision a time in the not-too-distant future when quantum computers would become an indispensable platform for businesses and other organizations. Since then, we have listened closely to Qiskit users’ feedback and made frequent up ..read more

Today, computation is central to the way we carry out the scientific method. High-performance computing resources help researchers generate hypotheses, find patterns in large datasets, perform statistical analyses, and even run experiments faster than ever before. Logically, access to a completely different computational paradigm — one with the potential to perform calculations intractable for any classical computer — could open up an entirely new realm for scientific discovery. As quantum computers extend our computational capabilities, so too do we expect them to extend our ability to push s ..read more

Discovery is a driving force of science and society — especially in life sciences and healthcare. Over the next few years, a convergence of high performance hybrid cloud computing, next generation AI, quantum computing, and new platform and data technologies in the IBM hybrid cloud to accelerate discovery by supercharging the scientific method. Yesterday, we announced a planned 10-year partnership that will deploy these emerging technologies and capabilities to advance life sciences and healthcare: The Discovery Accelerator at Cleveland Clinic. The collaborative engagement to enable Cleveland ..read more

During the month of March, IBM Research put the spotlight on a number of women scientists and engineers, and asked them about their professional and personal motivations, journeys and experiences as women — and particularly, as women in STEM. They represent the breadth of career experiences at IBM Research, across disciplines, geographies, ethnicities, tenures, and backgrounds, who share a passion for science and technology, as well as a commitment to help all women rise to meet their aspirations. Here are some of their inspiring stories. Kathryn Guarini, Ph.D – Chief Information Officer, IBM ..read more

IBM Quantum is excited to announce the world’s first ever developer certification for programming a quantum computer. Quantum computing is poised to change the way we solve difficult computer problems, and global interest in it has exploded in the past few years. On the Qiskit team, we saw thousands attend our Qiskit Global Summer School, and more than 600,000 installs of the Qiskit, an open source quantum software development kit supported by IBM. One market research report predicted that quantum computing will be a $65 billion industry by 2030, resulting in an influx of new quantum jobs, as ..read more

In June 2019 IBM Quantum announced the expansion of its quantum computing efforts to Africa in a new collaboration with the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University) in South Africa. Wits University became the first African academic partner in the IBM Quantum Network and a gateway for academic collaboration across South Africa with 15 additional universities that are part of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA). Abraham Asfaw, Global Lead of Quantum Education at IBM Quantum, speaks with developers at the 2019 IBM and Wits University Quantum Meet-Up in Johannesburg, South ..read more

Forty years ago, a ragtag group of 50 thinkers arranged themselves for a photo on the lawn of MIT’s Endicott House. Few at the Physics of Computation Conference, jointly organized by MIT and IBM, thought they were making history in 1981. None had the conference’s subject as their day job. At the time the physics and computing were viewed as largely separate, and their overlap was mainly the subject of speculation. Today, that conference holds more weight than any of us could have imagined. Perhaps due to the gravitas of its sponsoring institutions, and the fame of some of the attendees, it was ..read more

IBM Quantum is committed to building the best future for quantum computing through our hardware, our software, and perhaps most importantly, through the people we’re welcoming to the future quantum workforce. As we honor and celebrate Black History Month, it’s worth reflecting the state of our own field. Science has long suffered from a lack of diversity, and especially a lack of Black scientists, due to a history that at times explicitly and implicitly barred their participation. In the field of physics, for example, Black Americans represent only 1 percent of the total number of PhDs. A ..read more