Instead of its usual quantum summit this year, IBM will hold its first IBM Quantum Developer Conference which the company is calling, “an exclusive, first-of-its-kind.” It’s planned as an in-person conference at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. from 13-15 November 2024.
“In many ways, IBM Quantum Developer Conference is an evolution of previous events like IBM Quantum Summit. We’ve always been committed to finding different ways of bringing the quantum community together. By shifting to the new Quantum Developer Conference format, we hope to underscore the importance of utility, and of driving useful work,” said IBM in blog describing the event.
The goal, says IBM, is to provide quantum developers with “working hands-on [experience] with our latest tools and connecting with IBM researchers, engineers, and other experts right away…and will provide you with hands-on experience using the tools needed for mapping use cases to quantum circuits and executing these circuits on hardware, optimizing the quality of results while balancing runtime costs.”
(As of this writing, the deadline for applications had passed, though it never hurts to ask, and the company said it will make available various materials (recorded and otherwise) after the event.)
Transitioning the summit to a working developer’s conference is an interesting idea. For roughly a year now, IBM has argued that, at least on its quantum computers, the era of Quantum Utility has arrived. IBM contends that qubit counts, error mitigation techniques, and tools (primarily Qiskit) have advanced enough to make IBM systems powerful and reliable enough to perform tasks that can’t be done by brute force on classical systems.
One familiar item on the agenda is IBM’s annual review of its quantum progress and plans: “Day one of the event will be anchored by our annual quantum state-of-the-union address delivered by Jay Gambetta, VP of IBM Quantum. Each year, the quantum state-of-the-union reveals major announcements of progress made along our quantum roadmap, with previous editions debuting milestone achievements like the IBM Quantum System Two, the 133-qubit Heron processor, and Qiskit v1.0,” according to IBM.
IBM last updated its quantum technology plans in May with highlights shown in the table below as well as the roadmap that was issued last December.
Most of this year’s conference will likely focus on software. No new QPUs are expected. Both Flamingo and Crossbill were pushed to 2025 on earlier roadmaps. IBM is likely to offer more detail on plans for those chips. The big focus though is on Heron’s performance and interconnect ability and Qiskit advances. There’s also likely to be more discussion of IBM’s evolving idea of quantum-centric supercomputing which was the topic of a recent IBM blog. Here’s an excerpt:
“A quantum-centric supercomputer is a next-generation connection of a quantum computer with a classical supercomputer that uses error mitigation and error correction algorithms to yield results in practical runtimes.
“In the era of quantum computing, quantum-centric supercomputing is predicted to help researchers make major breakthroughs in the fields of material sciences, machine learning, generative AI, postquantum cryptography and more, potentially ahead of large-scale fully quantum systems.”
Broadly speaking, observers will be looking to see how IBM is doing against its expectations.
Last year, Gambetta said “We take pride in hitting every milestone on our roadmap. Putting a roadmap out for 10 years is a big deal. The roadmap, you’ll notice is actually going to be split into two. The top is what we call a development roadmap. And the bottom is called an innovation roadmap. Our goal is to be transparent, and to show how we’re making progress and all the innovations.”
IBM, of course, isn’t alone in issuing roadmaps. Many have followed in recent years, perhaps forced by IBM’s aggressive position, but IBM’s roadmaps have been by far the most detailed — something that draws praise and criticism in the community.
Lastly, for IBM watchers, it’s worth checking out the company’s interactive IBM Technology Atlas that broadly outlines IBM plans for AI, security, quantum, hybrid cloud, and. Automation and links to more detailed description of each.
Stay tuned.
Link to IBM blog describing its Quantum Developer Conference,
Link to IBM quantum technology roadmap,
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