IBM updated its quantum computing roadmap heading into IBM Quantum Starling, a large-scale fault-tolerant quantum system in 2029.

Big Blue said IBM Quantum Starling will be delivered by 2029 and installed at the IBM Quantum Data Center in Poughkeepsie, New York. That system is expected to perform 20,000 times ore operations than today's quantum computers.

For IBM, Quantum Starling will be the headliner of a fleet of quantum computing systems. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said the company is leaning into its R&D to scale out quantum computing for multiple use cases including drug development, materials discovery, chemistry, and optimization. IBM also recently outlined flexible pricing models for quantum computing to expand usage and upgraded its Quantum Data Center to its latest Heron quantum processor.

The news lands as quantum computing players outline plans to scale organically or via acquisition. IonQ just announced its plans through 2030 and quantum computing vendors have been laying out plans throughout 2025.

IBM said Starling will be able to run 100 million quantum operations using 200 logical qubits. A logical qubit is a unit of an error-corrected quantum computer tasked with storing one qubit’s worth of quantum information. Quantum computers need to be error corrected to run large workloads without fault.

Starling will also be a foundation system for IBM Quantum Blue Jay, which will be able to run 1 billion quantum operations over 2,000 logical qubits.

To get to fault tolerant scale, IBM is building an architecture that is fault tolerant, able to prepare and measure logical qubits, apply universal instructions and decode measurements from logical qubits in real time. This architecture, which was outlined in two research papers, also has to be modular and energy efficient.

Here's how IBM is going to get to Starling and beyond:

  • 2025: IBM Quantum Loon will launch to test architecture components for quantum low-density parity check (qLDPC) codes, which reduce the number of physical qubits needed for error correction and cuts overhead by about 90%.
  • 2026: IBM Quantum Kookaburra will feature a modular processor to store and process encoded information and combine quantum memory and logic operations.
  • 2027: IBM Quantum Cockatoo, will feature two Kookaburra modules that will link quantum chips together like nodes in a larger system.

Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research, said:

"Sometime in the last 6 months quantum vendors realized that they will not be able to produce enough qubits for real world use cases and are focusing on error correction. What is unique with IBM is that it's modular approach has led to the realization that there are challenges to overcome when putting multiple quantum computers together, hence a roadmap change and a focus on qLDPC based couplers, with 'Loon', coming this year. Next year will then be the showcase and proof point that all of this works with IBM Quantum Kookaburra. Kudos go to IBM for laying out its roadmap further, all the way to its Starling system, allowing CxOs to align their quantum uptake plans."

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