Tech giant IBM and RIKEN, a national research laboratory in Japan, have unveiled the first IBM Quantum System Two to be deployed outside the US and beyond an IBM Quantum Data Centre.
The system, co-located with RIKEN’s supercomputer Fugaku, was officially launched on 24 June 2025 in Kobe, Japan.
This initiative is supported by Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) as part of the “Project for Research and Development of Enhanced Infrastructures for Post 5G Information and Communications Systems.”
The IBM Quantum System Two at RIKEN is powered by IBM’s 156-qubit Quantum Heron processor.
IBM Heron boasts a two-qubit error rate of 3×10^-3 across a 100-qubit layered circuit, with a peak two-qubit error of 1×10^-3—ten times better than the previous 127-qubit IBM Quantum Eagle.
Additionally, Heron’s speed, measured by CLOPS (circuit layer operations per second), is 250,000, marking another tenfold improvement over IBM Eagle in the past year, according to the announcement.
RIKEN Center for Computational Science’Quantum-HPC Hybrid Platform Division director Dr Mitsuhisa Sato said: “Our mission is to develop and demonstrate practical quantum-HPC hybrid workflows that can be explored by both the scientific community and industry.
“The connection of these two systems enables us to take critical steps toward realizing this vision.”
With 156 qubits, Heron is described as the most performant quantum processor globally, capable of running quantum circuits beyond the reach of brute-force classical simulations.
The system is integrated with Fugaku, one of the world’s most powerful classical supercomputers, at the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS).
“The computers are linked through a high-speed network at the fundamental instruction level to form a proving ground for quantum-centric supercomputing,” enabling the development of parallelised workloads and low-latency communication protocols.
This integration aims to leverage the strengths of both quantum and classical systems for advanced algorithm research, including fundamental chemistry problems.
The quantum computer joins IBM’s global fleet and is expected to build on prior RIKEN-IBM research, such as sample-based quantum diagonalisation techniques used to model iron sulphides, as published in Science Advances.
IBM Quantum vice president Jay Gambetta said: “The future of computing is quantum-centric and with our partners at RIKEN we are taking a big step forward to make this vision a reality.”
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