IBM Quantum has entered the age of quantum utility—our quantum processors can now provide useful results to problems that challenge the best scalable classical methods. Now, we need to get utility-scale processors into the hands of our users.

What do we mean? Well, for the first time, we’re making utility-scale processors available on the IBM Cloud to access with a pay-as-you-go plan. Formerly reserved for our premium plan clients, the 127-qubit IBM Quantum Eagle is the first IBM Quantum processor to demonstrate evidence of quantum utility. Users are no longer limited by the scale of our 27-qubit processors and can begin to use processors to run calculations competitive with state-of-the-art classical methods.

Using error mitigation to outperform supercomputers

But what do we mean by quantum utility and utility-scale processors? Recently, IBM Quantum and the UC Berkley published a paper that compared an IBM Quantum Eagle processor with error mitigation to supercomputers running state-of-the-art classical computing methods to calculate expectation values for a condensed matter physics problem. Not only did the quantum processor provide accurate answers, but it performed better than the scalable classical methods for certain complex quantum circuits.

These results came from a combination of IBM Quantum hardware expertise and error mitigation—methods that use classical processing to remove noise from a quantum computation. We extended a previously investigated error mitigation method called Zero Noise Extrapolation with noise model learning that we explored in another error mitigation technique called Probabilistic Error Cancellation to return highly accurate expectation values. The Qiskit Runtime programming model and architecture allows IBM Cloud users to run primitive programs called sampler and estimator with built-in error mitigation, so all of our users will be capable of performing similar calculations on their own.

Everyone can take advantage of 100+ qubit systems

This change is part of IBM Quantum’s broader plan to transform our fleet to consist solely of utility-scale processors, starting with processors of 127 qubits or more. This is just the first step in that direction for our IBM Cloud offering as we continue to further add 127-qubit systems in the foreseeable future, while also sunsetting several 27-qubit systems. By ensuring our users have access only to the highest-performing systems, we can work together to push the field forward and develop use cases in this new era of quantum utility.