IBM expects HRL’s technical breakthroughs will fuel its quantum program for ‘decades to come’.
IBM is acquiring Boeing and General Motors’ jointly-owned research and development institute HRL Laboratories.
HRL’s expertise in silicon-spin qubit engineering is expected to help IBM in its long-term quantum plans. The lab was established in 1948 as Hughes Research Laboratories by the late prominent aviation expert Howard Hughes. Details of the transaction were not disclosed.
IBM has major ongoing quantum computing projects, including a roadmap to delivering Quantum Starling by 2029, expected to be fault-tolerant and 20,000 times more powerful than today’s quantum computers, capable of running 100m quantum operations.
As per plans, Starling will be followed up with an even more powerful quantum computer called Blue Jay, projected to be capable of 1bn quantum operations.
