IBM has upgraded one of its 27-qubit client-deployed systems to achieve a Quantum Volume 64, thus reaching a new milestone on its quantum computing road map. The company has made a total of 28 quantum computers available over the last four years through IBM Quantum Experience. 

Quantum Volume measures the length and complexity of circuits – the higher the Quantum Volume, the higher the potential for exploring solutions to real world problems across industry, government, and research.

To achieve this milestone, the company said it focused on a new set of techniques and improvements that used knowledge of the hardware to optimally run the Quantum Volume circuits.

These hardware-aware methods are extensible and will improve any quantum circuit run on any IBM Quantum system, resulting in improvements to the experiments and applications which users can explore.

“IBM’s full-stack approach gives an innovative avenue to develop hardware-aware applications, algorithms and circuits, all running on the most extensive and powerful quantum hardware fleet in the industry,” quipped Jay Gambetta, IBM Fellow and Vice President, IBM Quantum. 

IBM will make available these techniques in upcoming releases and improvements to the IBM Cloud software services and the cross-platform open source software development kit (SDK) Qiskit.