IBM plans a quantum leap: Nighthawk processor aims to scale beyond 1,000 qubits in 2027

Nighthawk r3 targets 2027

IBM says its upcoming Nighthawk r3 processor will contain 520 qubits. The company plans to introduce it in 2027 as part of its continuing effort to develop a fault-tolerant quantum system.

IBM intends to connect two processors into a system with more than 1,000 qubits. The company says a successor will offer over four times as many qubits and carry out 10,000 quantum operations while preserving the same speed and accuracy.

Why operation speed matters

IBM says applications increasingly need circuits that perform thousands of quantum operations on roughly 100 qubits or more. Faster execution could help gather the millions or billions of samples required for complex computations. The company argues that speed will affect whether demanding workloads can finish within practical timeframes and at reasonable cost.

Starling is planned for 2029

IBM previously described a goal of reaching reliable error correction in 2029 with a processor code-named Starling. It now intends for Starling to become the world’s first fault-tolerant quantum computer.

IBM says the planned machine would run circuits involving 100 million quantum operations on 200 logical qubits. Its design uses modules containing quantum memory and a logical processing unit, connected through universal adapters using l-couplers.

Progress and lingering doubts

The article notes that a University of Auckland professor claimed last year that quantum computers had not factored any number above 21 without cheating. That observation sits alongside IBM’s ambitions for increasingly capable machines.