The company has unveiled new innovations in quantum hardware and software that researchers hope will make quantum computing both error-proof and useful before the end of the decade
By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
10 June 2025
A rendering of IBM’s proposed quantum supercomputer
IBM
In less than five years, we will have access to an error-free quantum supercomputer – so says IBM. The firm has presented a roadmap for building this machine, called Starling, slated to be available to researchers across academia and industry in 2029.
“These are science dreams that became engineering,” says Jay Gambetta at IBM. He says that he and his colleagues have now developed all the pieces needed to make Starling work, and this makes them confident about their ambitious timeline. The new device will be housed in a data centre in New York, and Gambetta says that it could be useful to manufacturers of new chemicals and materials. Such computers are considered particularly suited to simulating materials at the quantum level.
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IBM has already made a whole fleet of quantum computers, but the path towards a truly useful device isn’t straightforward – nor is it devoid of competition. Errors continue to spoil many attempts to use quantum effects to solve problems that the best conventional supercomputers cannot.
Because of this, building quantum computers that correct their own errors – that are “fault-tolerant” – is key. So is making these devices bigger, and thus more powerful. There is no consensus on the best approach for addressing either challenge, so research teams are pursuing a variety of strategies.
All quantum computers rely on quantum bits, or qubits, but some teams make these building blocks from particles of light, others from extremely cold atoms, and in the case of Starling, IBM will use another variant – superconducting qubits. To make it unprecedentedly large and fault tolerant, IBM is betting on two innovations.