IBM Announces ‘Quantum Volume’ Metric to Determine Overall Power of a Quantum Computing System

(SearchDataCenter) IBM announced Quantum Volume, a new metric to better determine the overall power of a quantum computing system above and beyond its speed and performance. The metric will play a key role in accurately assessing progress toward achieving quantum advantage, or that point when quantum computers will surpass classical systems in practical use cases.
Bob Sutor, IBM’s vice president of Q strategy and ecosystem with IBM Research, recently discussed the new systems, the Quantum Volume metric of IBM quantum computers and offered some insights into recent breakthroughs in quantum computing science.
Sutor explained, “There are several ways to measure how powerful a quantum computer is. If you are trying to develop an application, the number of qubits matters. There are some problems that simply require that. But what you really need are enough good qubits and that is where our idea of Quantum Volume comes in because it measures all the characteristics of your system to ensure you have enough computing capacity at the right levels of accuracy.”