Yonsei switches on IBM's Quantum Nighthawk, the first installed at an outside institution's own site
The upgraded IBM Quantum System One in Incheon now runs IBM's 120-qubit Nighthawk processor, which IBM says delivers 25 times the circuit throughput of the Eagle chip it replaced.
By 1EyeAI Desk ·
Yonsei University on Nov. 4 marked the activation of an IBM Quantum Nighthawk processor in its IBM Quantum System One at the Songdo International Campus in Incheon, South Korea. IBM says it is the first time Nighthawk has run at the own facility of a member of the IBM Quantum Network.
The upgrade replaces the 127-qubit Eagle processor installed in 2024. According to IBM, Nighthawk has 120 programmable qubits and can run more than 100,000 circuits per second, which IBM says is 25 times the throughput of Yonsei's previous Eagle system. Press reports citing IBM say the chip has 218 couplers and 120 reset elements, for a total of 458 physical quantum components. IBM attributes the speedup largely to faster qubit reset.
At the launch, Jerry Chow, an IBM Fellow, told reporters the speed did not come at the expense of accuracy. The Korea Herald reports a two-qubit gate fidelity of about 99.7%.
Yonsei says it will use the system for hybrid classical-quantum research on biological systems, including work related to Leigh syndrome, and for graduate education. Aju Press reports that the event demonstrated sending computation results to RIKEN's Fugaku supercomputer in Japan.