New Nighthawk r3 processor volition be built to execute 10,000 quantum operations, enabling larger and additional complex computations as IBM advances its roadmap toward error tolerance
Clients and partners including E.ON, Algorithmiq, and Q-CTRL have run additional than 34 milliard circuits on Nighthawk r2, reporting speedups of up to 19x beyond former IBM quantum processors
Enhanced IBM Quantum Platform unites quantum alongside traditional computing in one environment
Nov 11, 2026
YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NY, November 11, 2026 — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced IBM Quantum Nighthawk r3, its next-generation processor, volition be built to accurately execute 10,000 quantum operations throughout 520 qubits to tackle larger, additional complex problems during maintaining the speed and norm demonstrated by the current generation Nighthawk accessible today.
In 2027, IBM plans to nexus two Nighthawk r3 processors into a sole scheme alongside additional than 1,000 qubits.
To be at the frontier of quantum computing, industry-relevant applications petition the two computational norm and speed. Speed matters since a quantum device delivers its answer in samples: all run of a quantum circuit returns one result. Applications increasingly necessitate circuits executing thousands of quantum operations on about 100 qubits or more, generating millions to billions of samples. Scale and norm allow increasingly complex computations, but speed determines whether these demanding workloads can be completed in applicable timeframes and at a sensible cost.
“Useful quantum computing hinges on whether results can be delivered alongside accuracy and speed, the two are fundamental,” stated Jay Gambetta, Director of IBM Research and IBM Fellow. “Nighthawk is already showing us what that looks akin today. As we measure this architecture to larger and additional mighty quantum computers, the capabilities of quantum computation volition attain new levels as we merge additional closely alongside traditional resources and march onward to error tolerance.”
Nighthawk r2: Delivering Speed for Real-World Workloads
Introduced in September, IBM Quantum Nighthawk r2 delivers up to 100,000 samples per second during supporting exact computations alongside additional than 7,500 quantum operations on 120 qubits. Its high-speed qubit reset innovation dramatically reduces the period between circuit executions, enabling applications to collect the millions or billions of samples needed for complex computations far additional efficiently.
Clients and partners including E.ON, Algorithmiq, and Q-CTRL have executed 34 milliard circuits on Nighthawk r2 to date, reporting achievement improvements of up to 19x during maintaining the norm needed for specialized computation.
The results are already demonstrating value throughout industries. E.ON reported a 15x speedup on Nighthawk r2 in quantum device learning for energy grid optimization. IBM used Nighthawk r2 for a 12x speedup of an test ran before this twelvemonth alongside Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which simulated genuine magnetic materials and produced results accordant alongside neutron scattering experiments. Both of these speedups were achieved complete former activity on IBM Quantum Heron. Quantum Elements and ParityQC are additionally among the partners reporting important achievement improvements on their own Nighthawk r2 workloads.
The quantum advantage experiments IBM and its partners published in July were archetypal run on IBM Quantum Heron, alongside circuits and results openly accessible for autonomous evaluation through the community-led Quantum Advantage Tracker. An experiment alongside Algorithmiq to simulate a heterogeneous quantum matter has now been extended to Nighthawk r2, leveraging its speed and connectivity to execute circuits 8 times faster than the first test on Heron. At the identical time, the new circuits are considerably additional challenging for traditional computers to simulate, requiring an estimated 240 times additional recollection to accomplish comparable accuracy whenever using foremost traditional tensor-network methods.
Nighthawk r3: Scaling to More Than 1,000 Qubits
Building on the achievement demonstrated by Nighthawk r2, Nighthawk r3 volition broaden the identical high-speed architecture to larger quantum computers. The new processor is designed to assistance 10,000 quantum operations on 520 programmable qubits, alongside 2,034 total bodily qubits. It retains r2's square-lattice connectivity and accelerated operations during introducing 10 chip-to-chip interconnects, called l-couplers, designed to nexus processors into larger systems.
IBM has already demonstrated two crucial technologies that allow this standardized approach. This year, IBM connected Nighthawk r1 processors using four l-couplers, achieving 99.3 percent quantum province transfer fidelity and progressing toward its 99.9 percent target. IBM additionally connected two cryogenic modules into a sole scheme for the archetypal time, reaching functioning heat in under five days and cooling below 15 millikelvin.
Together, these advances display crucial advancement in modularity and provision confidence in IBM's capability to measure Nighthawk to larger quantum computers. In 2027, IBM plans to nexus two Nighthawk r3 processors into a sole 1,040-qubit system, extending its high-performance architecture to larger and additional complex computations.
Quantum Meets Classical on the IBM Quantum Platform
Advancing quantum computers requires continued advancement in how they activity alongside traditional compute to grip errors. Industry-relevant workloads volition petition layers of quantum error correction and error mitigation techniques alongside noise learning and post-processing. As quantum workloads scale, they volition call for additional traditional resources, and the difficulty now is how to finest measure this integration.
To merge these paradigms, IBM Quantum Platform is bringing high-performance (HPC) traditional and quantum computing together into a sole managed environment. Users can now merge quantum workflows immediately alongside a range of traditional compute – whether from their laptop or a mighty supercomputer – or alongside the HPC and traditional resources that are newly accessible on the platform.
Users are seeing promising results from these integrations. For example, using the new environment, IBM and RIKEN* scientists executed their first sample-based quantum diagonalization (SQD) workflow approximately 5 times faster during performing 100 times additional computations than in the first study. Cleveland Clinic and RIKEN additionally leveraged the phase to automatically procedure 608 myriad samples for modeling biologically applicable structures, 33 times faster than without workflow automation.
Enhanced capabilities volition additionally energy breakthroughs in quantum error correction. IBM Quantum Platform offers pulse-level capabilities to provision researchers exact authority complete how they can detect, understand, and improved accurate errors inside quantum and traditional architectures. This helps them improved period operations, reset qubits faster, and extract additional data from quantum measurements – giving researchers the visibility to enhance error correction at its most essential levels.
IBM lately launched a new co-design phase for quantum error correction alongside Oak Ridge National Laboratory and AMD that physically co-locates Nighthawk alongside ORNL’s Umbra High-Performance Computing (HPC) system, powered by AMD Instinct™ MI355X GPUs and 5th Gen AMD EPYC™ CPUs.
About IBM
IBM is a foremost earth hybrid haze and AI, and endeavor services provider, assisting clients in additional than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline endeavor processes, decrease expenses and acquire the rivalrous border in their industries. Thousands of governments and company entities in crucial infrastructure areas specified as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare depend on IBM's hybrid haze phase and Red Hat OpenShift to power their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific haze solutions and endeavor services provision open and elastic options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing dedication to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.
For additional information, sojourn https://research.ibm.com.
Media contacts:
Brittany Forgione
IBM
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Erin Angelini
IBM
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* This project is supported by NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization), an institution under the jurisdiction of Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI)'s "Research and Development of Quantum-Supercomputers Hybrid Platform for Exploration of Uncharted Computable Capabilities" (Project Leader: Mitsuhisa Sato) as part of the "Project for Research and Development of Enhanced Infrastructures for Post 5G Information and Communications Systems (JPNP20017)."
