IBM to start selling quantum cloud computing to the masses

Still, a 50-qubit machine would outperform today’s highest performance supercomputers, underscoring the huge potential of quantum computing as traditional Moore’s Law digital scaling runs out of steam. The API enables programmers and developers to begin building interfaces that will connect classical computers and legacy systems to the existing five quantum (qubit) cloud-based quantum computer without needing a deep understanding or background in physics. A qubit is a unit of quantum information. A full SDK is in the works for the IBM Quantum Experience and will be coming sometime in the first half of 2017.

Your business will finally get the chance to use a quantum computer to do. well, whatever a business could use a quantum computer for.

According to Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president of IBM Systems, “classical computers” will continue to evolve – rather than being replaced by – quantum computers.

Unfortunately, the use of quantum bits is also what hinders the construction of quantum computers, because everything around us could interact and disorganize the entangled particles used to store information, and destroy the quantum effects needed for such a device to work.

The company today released a set of tools that aim to help developers learn how to write applications for the quantum computers of tomorrow.

Making quantum computing a reality will require much more than overcoming the hardware limitations that now rule the discussion.

One major application for quantum computing is in chemistry and medicine.

Crowder revealed that Big Blue’s quantum computing system now includes an interface which lets developers launch instructions using conventional programming languages.

IBM is now working on quantum tech along with industry leaders such as Samsung, Canon, Hitachi, Honda, JSR, and more.

Essentially, quantum computers are a super calculator that can answer scientific questions in seconds, which would take a scientist years or a lifetime to figure out. The expanded quantum computing effort announced by IBM, is an expansion of the company’s Quantum Experience initiative that was first deployed in May 2016. The company was initially expected to release a 50-qubit quantum computer by 2018, but it’s not clear whether it still intends to do so or whether it wants to wait a few more years.

IBM is by no means the only company working on quantum computing. The focus for the 50-bit quantum computers will be on bringing them stability, including connectivity between qubits, as well as the gating and error correction. Last year, it introduced an online service to give researchers early access to its quantum computers. We understand that a quantum computer with n qubits can be in an arbitrary superposition of up to 2 different states simultaneously. IBM has made the specs for its new Quantum API available on GitHub and provided simple scripts to demonstrate how the API functions.

Google’s engineers said that for quantum computers to evolve, both better hardware and better algorithms will be needed.