It might look like a backwards step, but as the company is keen to point out, Heron’s qubits will be of the highest quality.
But this year IBM is also expected to debut its Heron processor, which will have just 133 qubits. It might look like a backwards step, but as the company is keen to point out, Heron’s qubits will be of the highest quality. And, crucially, each chip will be able to connect directly to other Heron processors, heralding a shift from single quantum computing chips toward “modular” quantum computers built from multiple processors connected together—a move that is expected to help quantum computers scale up significantly.