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 is the second rung on a ladder IBM has been climbing publicly since it put a five-qubit quantum computer on the cloud for students and researchers in 2016. The move to 20 qubits as a cloud service by end of 2017, plus a 50-qubit prototype, keeps that cadence going: each generation goes straight to external users rather than staying in the lab.
First-order effects
- Researchers and developers with cloud access get roughly a fourfold jump in usable qubits over the 2016 machine, making IBM's service the largest externally available quantum computer at the time.
- The 50-qubit prototype gives IBM a public benchmark to claim leadership while rivals' machines remain largely lab-bound.
Second-order effects
- Competing quantum hardware makers are pushed to match the cloud-delivery model itself, since IBM is setting user expectations that quantum access means an API, not a site visit.
- An application layer starts forming around IBM's service: whoever hosts the largest accessible machine also captures the early developer ecosystem and the tooling lock-in that follows.
Third-order effects
- The steady qubit scaling shown here — five, twenty, fifty — is the runway that later coverage extends with the 53-qubit machine for external use in 2019 and IBM's plan for a fault-tolerant IBM Quantum Starling by 2029, pointing toward quantum compute sold as a utility alongside classical cloud.
- If the pattern holds, hardware differentiation shifts from raw qubit counts to error correction and circuit technology — consistent with IBM's later plan to integrate HRL's electron spin quantum circuits into its machines.
The trend: Quantum computing is being productized as a cloud service on a public qubit-scaling roadmap, with IBM using successive capacity announcements to define the market before fault-tolerant machines arrive.