It is technology company IBM’s second quantum data centre globally, and marks a significant expansion of its fleet of advanced, utility-scale quantum systems available to global users via the cloud.
Now online in Ehningen, Germany, Europe's first IBM Quantum Data Center includes two new utility-scale, IBM Quantum Eagle-based systems, and will soon feature a new IBM Quantum Heron-based system. These systems are capable of performing computations beyond the brute-force simulation capabilities of classical computers.
First introduced late last year, IBM Heron is the company's most performant quantum chip yet, and advances the company's mission of bringing useful quantum computing to the world by enabling users to increase the complexity of algorithms they are exploring on real quantum hardware.
When the IBM Heron-based system is made available at the IBM Quantum Data Center in Europe, it will be the third IBM Heron installed across IBM's fleet of quantum systems that can be accessed by the company's global quantum network of more than 250 enterprises, universities, research institutions, and organisations.
IBM Heron offers up to a 16-fold increase in performance and a 25-fold increase in speed over previous IBM quantum computers as they were measured two years ago.
When it is deployed alongside the now-available utility-scale systems installed in the new IBM Quantum Data Center, the IBM Heron-based system will expand the more than a dozen quantum computers IBM currently offers through the cloud – the largest fleet of its kind in the world.
The opening of the new quantum data centre was celebrated at a ribbon-cutting event attended by senior government officials, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, Minister for Economic Affairs, Labour, and Tourism, State of Baden-Württemberg.
Additionally, the landmark moment was attended by several senior leaders of European-based global enterprises, including Crédit Mutuel, Bosch, E.ON, Volkswagen Group, and others, as well as research institutions such as Ikerbasque in Spain and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.
These organisations are among the more than 80 European-based organisations within the IBM Quantum Network, many of which have the opportunity to access the systems within the IBM Quantum Data Center in Europe to search for the algorithms and applications of quantum computing that could solve some of the most complex challenges across their industries.
"The opening of the IBM Quantum Data Center in Ehningen is good news for Germany. It will serve as a location for innovation and business growth, and is an expression of investors' confidence in the German market,” said Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.
“The German Government is providing targeted support for the development of quantum technologies. It is thereby driving forward the development of competencies and capacities in quantum computing in order to promote a robust ecosystem around the development of quantum computers.”
"We believe that enabling our scientists and engineers to tackle demanding problems in materials sciences, high-energy physics, and biosciences through quantum computing, and providing state-of-the-art quantum computing access will be key to make disruptive progress in all those disciplines," said Javier Aizpurua, Ikerbasque Professor, Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) and Director of BasQ.
"A combined use of quantum computing, AI, and data science, if generalised, will give rise to a scenario of new possibilities not only in fundamental research but also in industrial innovation."
IBM recently published evidence that Qiskit is the world's leading and most performant quantum software. Together with access to IBM's advanced quantum hardware, IBM's ecosystem of users globally can access tools that can help them to more easily advance the discovery of algorithms that could reach quantum advantage – the point at which a quantum computer can solve a practical problem better than any classical method.