Alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, senior European government officials and European-based global enterprises, IBM today unveiled the first IBM Quantum Data Center located outside of the United States. It is the company’s second quantum data center in the world 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 organizations. IBM Heron offers up to a 16-fold increase in performance and 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 center 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. IBM CEO and Chairman Arvind Krishna gave remarks alongside Chancellor Scholz, and the Chancellor also spoke at length with IBM leaders including Dario Gil, IBM Senior Vice President and Director of Research; Ana Paula Assis, General Manager of IBM EMEA; Jay Gambetta, Vice President of IBM Quantum; and IBM Quantum’s German-based team about the importance of quantum computing’s adoption and growth in the region.
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 organizations are among the more than 80 European-based organizations 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 IBM Quantum Data Center in Europe can be accessed through the IBM Quantum Platform, continuing IBM’s mission to enable the development of quantum computing use cases and to support clients as they press forward with algorithm discovery in the era of quantum utility, and towards quantum advantage.
