Last year, IBM hauled a 50-qubit quantum computer to CES. Or, rather, it brought the eye-catching bits -- an intricate collection of tubes and wires that resembled a steampunk chandelier -- and left the more cumbersome cooling and power-management parts at home. The complete system, housed at a research lab in Yorktown Heights, New York, was spread out over a large room. It was a functional but totally inelegant design, according to Bob Sutor, vice president of IBM Q Strategy and ecosystem.
"Imagine a car," he told Engadget, "but take off the shiny exterior of the car. And then move the battery over to one side. Instead of having a very tightly integrated set of electronics in the powertrain and things like that, start pulling them apart into pieces and just kind of spreading them all around the car. It might still be functional. But it's not a great design [in terms of] integration, right?"
Roughly one year ago, IBM set out to make something better: a fully integrated system that was modular, easily upgradable and optimized for quantum computing. The result, which is being unveiled at CES today, is called the IBM Q System One.
And it looks wild.
Gallery: IBM Q System One | 7 Photos
Gallery: IBM Q System One | 7 Photos
All of the parts are nestled inside a 9-foot cube made with half-inch-thick borosilicate glass. The front and back "doors" can open simultaneously, giving engineers access to the quantum computer at the front and the various cooling and control modules hidden behind a rear panel. Opening both doors would cause the cube to tip over, rather like a sloping parallelogram -- so the cube is also reinforced by a series of independent aluminum and steel frames. These ensure structural integrity while minimizing vibrations and other potential interference.
This jaw-dropping look was dreamt up by Map Project Office, an industrial design firm that has worked with Sonos, Honda and Kano before, and Universal Design Studio, an architecture and interior design practice based in London. The glass cube was handled by Goppion, a Milan-based manufacturer that has designed high-end display cases for the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London and more.
The glass shell allows IBM to tightly control the temperature inside.
It's no surprise, therefore, that the quantum computer looks like a piece of art.
The glass shell allows IBM to tightly control the temperature inside. That's critical for the quantum chip -- which has to be kept at around 10 millikelvins, or a fraction above absolute zero -- and the supplementary electronics that read the board. Any vibrations or unexpected changes in temperature can render a project useless. IBM's new design should, in theory, reduce the number of errors that occur while running experiments and, therefore, make the system more reliable for IBM's various research and commercial partners.