By Ana Maria Constantin
Publication Date: 2026-11-11 18:13:00
IBM’s next quantum chip, Nighthawk r3, is designed to run 10,000 operations on 520 qubits. IBM plans to link two of them into a 1,040-qubit system in 2027. Customers report speedups of up to 19x on the current Nighthawk chip.
IBM plans to build a quantum computer with more than 1,000 qubits in 2027 by linking two of its next-generation chips, the company announced on Wednesday.
The new chip, called Nighthawk r3, is designed to run 10,000 quantum operations on 520 usable qubits. It has 10 connectors for joining chips together. IBM says two of them will form a single 1,040-qubit system.
Qubits are the basic units of a quantum computer. Each run of a quantum program gives one result, so useful work can take millions or billions of runs. That makes speed as important as size.
“Useful quantum computing hinges on whether results can be delivered with accuracy and speed, both are fundamental,” said Jay Gambetta, director of IBM Research.
The current chip,…
