IBM has made ambitious plans to provide the first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer in the world by the year 2029. Known as IBM Starling, the system is expected to be 20,000 times more powerful than the most powerful quantum machines available today. IBM asserts that emulating Starling on classical computers would require the memory of over a quindecillion (10^48) of the fastest supercomputers in the world—a statement that highlights the sheer complexity of the system.
Lofty claims are not uncommon in quantum computing, but IBM has provided a detailed roadmap to Starling. This adventure starts in 2024 when IBM Quantum Loon and its Nighthawk chip are expected to debut. It will experiment with critical elements of a new error-correcting architecture called quantum low-density parity check (qLDPC) code.
IBM predicts to achieve quantum advantage in 2026, when quantum computers will surpass classical systems in practical tasks. Also in this year, IBM Quantum Kookaburra is expected to launch, featuring the first modular processor of encoded information—a crucial step to scalability.
The Cockatoo architecture will arrive by 2027, and it is aimed at connecting several quantum chips together as nodes in a bigger network. This gets around the impracticality of making single chips of unscalable size and moves towards scalable, fault-tolerant systems.
These innovations will lead to IBM Starling in 2029, which can perform 100 million quantum operations with 200 logical qubits. Areas of application will be drug discovery, chemistry, materials science, and optimization of logistics.
Further in the future, IBM is currently scheduled to release Blue Jay, a second-generation platform with 1 billion quantum gates and 2,000 logical qubits, in 2033 or later. With competitors such as Google also in their own ambitious quest, the race to useful quantum computing is getting hotter—and with IBM’s roadmap indicating a significant jump, it is likely that we will see a breakthrough soon.
