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.
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.
roomey
I recommend people read the Ars Technica article [1] too, better written than this press release.
I keep wondering how long before funding for quantum computer development dries up due to lack of significant progress. I mean, we've been hearing stories about "breakthroughs" in the field for over three decades now and still these machines can't do anything useful. Some companies are even selling quantum machines (D-Wave) and people are still trying to figure out what to do with them.
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Can it run Shor?
dvh
Is this new processor capable of achieving reliable and practically useful results beyond the capabilities of classical machines? The answer is almost certainly, no.
comments (6)
Very cool technology though.
[1] https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/goldeneye-cryogenic-concept...
azalemeth
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.
roomey
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/11/ibm-to-offer-access-...
wasabi991011
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dvh
O3marchnative