IBM will make 20-qubit quantum computing machine available as a cloud service by end of 2017 and unveils 50-qubit quantum computing prototype
IBM has been offering quantum computing as a cloud service since last year when it came out with a 5 qubit version of the advanced computers.
Context & Ripple Effects
This announcement extends a deliberate playbook: IBM first put a five-qubit machine on the cloud in 2016 for students and researchers, and is now quadrupling the accessible qubit count with a 20-qubit cloud service due by end of 2017 while showing off a 50-qubit prototype behind it.
The move matters because it made raw qubit counts a public, comparable benchmark — a cadence IBM kept up with a 53-qubit machine for external use in 2019 and later plans for a fault-tolerant system, Quantum Starling, targeted for New York state by 2029.
First-order effects
- Researchers and developers using IBM's cloud service jump from five to twenty qubits by year-end, letting them run circuits four times larger without owning any hardware.
- The 50-qubit prototype sets IBM's next public milestone, converting lab progress into a marketing number competitors must answer.
Second-order effects
- Rival quantum efforts face pressure to match both the qubit-count announcements and the cloud-access model, since free-tier cloud availability is what turned IBM's hardware into the default research platform.
- Cloud delivery shifts buyers from capital purchases to metered experiments, pulling quantum workloads into the same consumption economics — and the same vendor lock-in dynamics — as conventional cloud compute.
Third-order effects
- If the 5-to-20-to-53-qubit progression holds toward fault-tolerant targets like Starling, quantum computing consolidates into a few cloud platforms that own the stack, with access tiers rather than machine sales defining who can experiment at scale.
- Error correction becomes the structural dividing line: physical qubit counts drive headlines today, but the platforms that reach fault tolerance first convert academic interest into durable commercial infrastructure.
The trend: Quantum computing is scaling from laboratory curiosities into cloud-delivered platforms, with IBM's qubit-count cadence and eventual fault-tolerance push setting the industry's reference roadmap.