First IBM Quantum Data Center in Europe Opens

Alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, senior European government officials and European-based global enterprises, IBM has unveiled the first IBM Quantum Data Centre located outside of the United States. 

It is the company’s second quantum data centre in the world and marks a significant expansion of its fleet of advanced, utility-scale quantum systems available to global users via the cloud. 

Now online in Ehningen, Germany, Europe’s first IBM Quantum Data Centre includes two new utility-scale, IBM Quantum Eagle-based systems, and will soon feature a new IBM Quantum Heron-based system. These systems are capable of performing computations beyond the brute-force simulation capabilities of classical computers. 

First introduced late last year, IBM Heron is the company’s highest performance quantum chip, and advances the company’s mission of bringing useful quantum computing to the world by enabling users to increase the complexity of algorithms they are exploring on real quantum hardware. 

When the IBM Heron-based system is made available at the IBM Quantum Data Centre in Europe, it will be the third IBM Heron installed across IBM’s fleet of quantum systems that can be accessed by the company’s global quantum network of more than 250 enterprises, universities, research institutions, and organizations.

IBM Heron offers up to a 16-fold increase in performance and 25-fold increase in speed over previous IBM quantum computers as they were measured two years ago. 

When it is deployed alongside the now-available utility-scale systems installed in the new IBM Quantum Data Centre, the IBM Heron-based system will expand the more than a dozen quantum computers IBM currently offers through the cloud – the largest fleet of its kind in the world. 
 
The opening of the new quantum data center was celebrated at a ribbon-cutting event attended by senior government officials, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Dr Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, Minister for Economic Affairs, Labour, and Tourism, State of Baden-Württemberg.

IBM CEO and Chairman Arvind Krishna gave remarks alongside Chancellor Scholz, and the Chancellor also spoke at length with IBM leaders including Dario Gil, IBM Senior Vice President and Director of Research; Ana Paula Assis, General Manager of IBM EMEA; Jay Gambetta, Vice President of IBM Quantum; and IBM Quantum’s German-based team about the importance of quantum computing’s adoption and growth in the region. 
 
“The opening of the IBM Quantum Data Centre in Ehningen is good news for Germany. It will serve as a location for innovation and business growth, and is an expression of investors’ confidence in the German market. IBM enriches the German quantum computing landscape with this new data centre.

The German government is providing targeted support for the development of quantum technologies. It is thereby driving forward the development of competencies and capacities in quantum computing in order to promote a robust ecosystem around the development of quantum computers,” said Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.
 
“The opening of our first IBM Quantum Data Centre in Europe marks a pivotal moment for the region’s technological development, demonstrates our commitment to Europe, and underscores the key role of collaboration with industry, academia and policymakers for a pan-European quantum ecosystem. This state-of-the-art facility will foster innovation around quantum computing, creating new opportunities for talent attraction and ensuring that Europe remains at the forefront of global technological advancements,” said Ana Paula Assis, General Manager and Chairman of IBM Europe, Middle East and Africa.

 
“We believe that enabling our scientists and engineers to tackle demanding problems in materials sciences, high-energy physics, and biosciences through quantum computing, and providing state-of-the-art quantum computing access will be key to make disruptive progress in all those disciplines,” said Javier Aizpurua, Ikerbasque professor, Donostia International Physics Centre (DIPC) and director of BasQ. “A combined use of quantum computing, AI, and data science, if generalised, will give rise to a scenario of new possibilities not only in fundamental research but also in industrial innovation.”

IBM recently published evidence that Qiskit is the world’s leading and most high performance quantum software. Together with access to IBM’s advanced quantum hardware, IBM's ecosystem of users across Europe and globally can access tools and systems that can help them to more easily advance the discovery of algorithms that could open the doorway to useful quantum computing and reach quantum advantage: the point at which a quantum computer can solve a practical problem better than any classical method. 

"Algorithmiq is pioneering the integration of quantum computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and network science to solve the world’s most complex problems in chemistry, healthcare and life sciences. To accomplish this, we need algorithms and scale. This is why we’ve partnered with IBM on both counts: our groundbreaking error mitigation algorithm, TEM, available through the Qiskit Functions Catalog, is capable of extending the scale and accuracy of quantum simulations.

And now, with more IBM quantum systems available in Europe, we’re excited to further strengthen our ties in Europe and partner with an even larger ecosystem of industries, organizations, developers, and scientists to demonstrate TEM’s utility — and progress toward quantum advantage,” said Sabrina Maniscalco, CEO of Algorithmiq.
 
The IBM Quantum Data Centre in Europe can be accessed through the IBM Quantum Platform, continuing IBM’s mission to enable the development of quantum computing use cases and to support clients as they press forward with algorithm discovery in the era of quantum utility, and towards quantum advantage.