IBM Nighthawk r2 demonstrates quantum advantage in new study

Researchers led by Tigran Sedrakyan of BlueQubit have demonstrated a significant quantum advantage using IBM’s Nighthawk r2 quantum processor. In a random-circuit sampling (RCS) experiment, the 120-qubit processor generated one million samples in just 19 seconds.

According to simulation models, performing the same task on the Frontier supercomputer would take approximately 110 years. The experiment utilized 61 qubits and reached a complexity of 36 cycles involving 918 two-qubit gates.

A notable aspect of this achievement is that the Nighthawk r2 (identified as ibm_phoenix) is a commercially available processor accessible via IBM’s cloud platform. The researchers conducted the test using a standard execution environment without specialized calibrations, suggesting the results are more easily replicable than demonstrations performed on isolated laboratory hardware. The study, currently available as a preprint, has not yet undergone formal peer review.