IBM Spins Off the First Pure-Play Quantum Chip Foundry
46 points
4 hours ago
| 4 comments
| futurumgroup.com
| HN
caminante
14 minutes ago
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This is a pro-IBM piece.

I'm surprised it has zero mention of potential advantages of trapped ion despite being superior on stability windows, accuracy, and operating temps.

I also appreciate the disclosure about AI generated content, but this article gets too repetitive.

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dvh
57 minutes ago
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Can the chips they plan to make there run Shor?
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bawolff
14 minutes ago
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If they could in any meaningful way, i'm pretty sure the press release would have lead with that.
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madanparas
1 hour ago
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The real story isn't the $2B. It's that the foundry is standalone, so other quantum hardware companies can use it. Shared infrastructure beats nine separate research cleanrooms.
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Zigurd
1 hour ago
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Is there enough agreement regarding what is a quantum chip, and what process technology is necessary to make one?
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ghaff
13 minutes ago
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I've been out of the space for a bit. IBM has been betting on the engineered superconducting approach, which makes sense given their background, but there are other options, often for potentially different problem areas. Need to dive back in.
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imglorp
36 minutes ago
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Is there any agreement regarding real applications that warrant fab volume or is this still speculation?
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bawolff
34 minutes ago
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There is high agreement on what the real applications of Quantum computing are. Unfortunately these projects are basically useless when it comes to them.
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icegreentea2
24 minutes ago
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Can you clarify? Do you mean that superconducting qubits are unable to perform the "real applications" theoretically, or that superconducting qubits at the scale this foundry could produce will be unable, or that superconducting qubits that will foundry could produce will still be outperformed by classical techniques?
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bawolff
23 minutes ago
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I mean, we are no where near the scale [qubit count] & quality where the applications apply. Not just this foundry but in general. I suppose the point is to eventually get there, but we are not close yet.

You should still view anything Quantum as early R&D.

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stogot
1 hour ago
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The article talks about IBM spreading bets to other techniques. Reminds me to ponder again. Has Microsoft retracted their sketchy quantum claims about inventing new states of matter in the past year? https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2025/03/12/microsofts-qu...
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