IBM Quantum Heron, the company’s most efficient quantum processor to date and available in IBM’s global quantum data centers, can now leverage Qiskit to precisely run certain classes of quantum circuits of up to 5,000 two-qubit gates . Users can now use these capabilities to expand explorations of how quantum computers can solve scientific problems in materials, chemistry, life sciences, high-energy physics and more.
This contributes to important milestones in IBM’s quantum development roadmap and advances the era of quantum utility[1] as IBM and its partners move closer to quantum advantage and IBM’s advanced error-correcting system planned for 2029.
The combined enhancements from IBM Heron and Qiskit make it possible to run certain quantum circuits simulating kicked Ising models at up to 5,000 gates, almost twice the number of gates executed accurately in the demonstration. quantum utility of IBM in 2023. This work makes it possible to further extend the performance of IBM’s quantum computers beyond the capabilities of classical brute force simulation methods. The 2023 Quantum Utility Experiment, published in Nature, demonstrated speed results in terms of processing time, per data, for a total of 112 hours. The same experiment, using the same data, was run on the latest IBM Heron processor and was completed in 2.2 hours, 50 times faster.
IBM has evolved Qiskit into the world’s most powerful quantum software, making it easier for developers to design complex quantum circuits with stability, precision and speed. This is shown by results collected and published on arXiv.org using Benchpress, an open source benchmark tool that IBM used to measure Qiskit on 1,000 tests, largely from third parties, and which found it to be the highest performing and most reliable quantum SDK compared to other selected platforms.
New software tools to advance the development of next-generation algorithms
The IBM Quantum Platform further expands options with new Qiskit services such as generative AI-based capabilities and software from IBM partners, enabling a growing network of experts across all sectors of activity to design new generation algorithms for scientific research.
This includes tools such as the Qiskit Transpiler service to efficiently optimize quantum circuits for quantum hardware with AI; Qiskit Code Assistant to help developers generate quantum code with generative AI models based on IBM Granite; Qiskit Serverless to run initial approaches to quantum supercomputers across quantum and classical systems; and the IBM Qiskit Feature Catalog to provide services from IBM, Algorithmiq, Qedma, QunaSys, Q-CTRL, and Multiverse Computing for capabilities such as reducing quantum noise performance management , as well as abstracting the complexities of quantum circuits to simplify the development of quantum algorithms.
“Algorithmiq’s Tensor Network Error Mitigation (TEM) algorithm, available through the IBM Qiskit Feature Catalog, delivers state-of-the-art error mitigation for circuits at a useful scale by leveraging steps to approaches of quantum supercomputers, delivering the fastest quantum execution time we have ever offered to users,” said Matteo Rossi, CTO of Algorithmiq. “With the recent advances we have made in combining quantum computers with post-processing on GPUs, we are pushing TEM’s capabilities to support circuits with up to 5,000 entangled quantum gates – an important milestone for scaling quantum experiments and solving complex problems. This could open the way to quantum simulations and calculations previously limited by noise. »
“Advancements in IBM’s quantum hardware and software are critical to Qedma’s mission to create services that enable our users to run the longest and most complex quantum circuits,” said Dorit Aharonov, Chief Scientific Officer at Qedma. “Combined with our own achievements in error mitigation, which we offer through the Qedma service in the IBM Qiskit Feature Catalog, we look forward to continuing our mission of enabling users around the world to design algorithms with current quantum systems and obtain increasingly precise results of scientific value. »
Qiskit Powers Classical and Quantum Integration for the Future of Computing
As the next evolution of high-performance computing, IBM’s vision of the quantum supercomputer aims to integrate advanced quantum and classical computers running parallelized applications to easily break down complex problems with powerful software, enabling each architecture to solve the parts of an algorithm for which it is best suited. These software programs are designed to recompose problems transparently and quickly, making it possible to run inaccessible or difficult algorithms for each computing paradigm in isolation.
RIKEN, a national scientific research institute in Japan, and the Cleveland Clinic, a leading academic medical center and biomedical research facility with a 100+ qubit IBM Quantum System One on site, are exploring algorithms to electronic structure problems that are fundamental to chemistry.
These initiatives represent the first steps toward quantum supercomputer approaches for realistically modeling complex chemical and biological systems, a task historically considered to require fault-tolerant quantum computers.
The first examples of these types of processes are methods based on parallel classical processing of individual samples from quantum computers. Building on previous techniques, such as QunaSys’ QSCI method, IBM and RIKEN researchers performed sample-based quantum diagonalizations in quantum supercomputer environments, which use quantum hardware to accurately model the electronic structure of iron sulfides, a compound widely found in nature and in organic systems.
Now available as a deployable Qiskit service, this same technique is being leveraged by the Cleveland Clinic to study how it could be used to implement quantum simulations of non-covalent interactions: bonds between molecules that are essential to many chemical, biological and pharmaceutical scientific processes.
“This research is an example of what makes our research partnership successful: bringing together IBM’s next-generation technologies and Cleveland Clinic’s globally recognized expertise in healthcare and life sciences said Lara Jehi, MD, Chief Research Information Officer at the Cleveland Clinic. “Together, we are pushing traditional scientific boundaries by using cutting-edge technologies like Qiskit to advance research and find new treatments for patients around the world. »
“Together with our partners at IBM, we were able to leverage their advanced quantum electronic structure simulation algorithm to study – for the first time – intermolecular interactions on the IBM Quantum System One deployed at the Cleveland Clinic, which are important for potential future applications in drug discovery and design,” said Kennie Merz, PhD and quantum molecular scientist at the Cleveland Clinic.
“The RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS) is leading the Japan High Performance Computing-Quantum (JHPC-Quantum) project, which aims to design a hybrid quantum-HPC computing platform by integrating our supercomputer, Fugaku, with an IBM Quantum On-premises System Two powered by an IBM Quantum Heron processor. In the era of quantum utility, we will strongly support the initiative’s goal of demonstrating quantum supercomputer approaches using our platform as the first step towards this new computing architecture,” said Mitsuhisa Sato, the director of Quantum-HPC Hybrid Platform Division, RIKEN Center for Computational Science.
Additionally, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is using Qiskit tools to take the first steps toward establishing IBM’s first realization of a quantum supercomputer on a college campus. Through powerful software, RPI and IBM aim to successfully connect applications from IBM’s AiMOS classic supercomputer and Quantum System One, both located on the RPI campus, into a single computing environment managed by a resource manager standard high-performance computing.
“Since unveiling the IBM Quantum System One on the RPI campus earlier this year, we have taken steps to achieve another major first by beginning to connect the quantum system to our AiMOS supercomputer,” said A . Schmidt, Ph.D., president of RPI. “This moment is a testament to our long-standing partnership with IBM and, like the combination of quantum computing and our high-performance classical computer, our two institutions will achieve exciting breakthroughs together in the years to come.” »
[1] IBM considers that we have entered the era of quantum utility since June 2023, an era in which quantum hardware can execute quantum circuits faster and with more precision than a classical computer simulating a quantum computer.
