IBM's Nighthawk Chip Hits 19x Speedup, Sets Sights on 1,000-Qubit System
IBM Quantum Nighthawk Demonstrates New Levels of Speed and Quality
IBM's Nighthawk r2 quantum processor has already run 34 billion circuits for partners like E.ON and Algorithmiq, delivering speedups up to 19x over earlier IBM hardware. The next chip, Nighthawk r3, is designed to execute 10,000 operations across 520 qubits, and IBM plans to link two of them into a 1,040-qubit system in 2027. IBM is also merging quantum and classical computing into a single managed platform.
Useful quantum computing hinges on whether results can be delivered with accuracy and speed, both are fundamental.
- roomey
It is very irritating when people complain here that it's not faster than classical or other such complaints.
Please, it is still a research project, it's not like a regular computer just faster, it is novel research.
Regarding the quantum side, I would love to know if by programmable qubit are they referring to an error corrected qubit or just one where gates can be applied.
I suspect it means error corrected qubits. I was wondering if there was work being done on algorithms that are noise resistant and as such can take advantage of the raw qubit count instead of the error corrected qubit count.
I would love to work in this area but I think it's all research at the moment. It's really interesting, how it actually works, not just the hand wavy abstractions.
- azalemeth
IBM's huge, modular dilution fridge is an interesting idea for superconducting plasmon qubits [1]. I really can't help but wonder what the power consumption will be for both it at datacentre scale and also what a fundamental barrier to anything remotely "at home" that is. I've worked with dil fridges a lot. They're neither cheap nor commonplace and famously most of the world's helium has a nasty habit of leaving at the top of the atmosphere (very marginally cooling it!) as it is so light, and the sources of helium are mostly underground and collected by machines blown up in the middle east or russia recently, as a byproduct of oil and gas extraction.
Very cool technology though.
[1] https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/goldeneye-cryogenic-concept...
- wasabi991011
I recommend people read the Ars Technica article [1] too, better written than this press release.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/11/ibm-to-offer-access-...