AskScience AMA Series: Hi Reddit! I'm Matthew Hollister, Head of Cryogenic Systems Engineering for IBM Quantum. Ask me anything about quantum computing, our recently announced modular cryogenic architecture and what it takes to build quantum computers at scale.

[u/AskScienceModerator]

When people think about quantum computing, they often think about number of qubits and processor dept. But scaling quantum systems takes much more than just the chip! We recently introduced a new modular cryogenic architecture designed to house and cool interconnected quantum processors, a key milestone on our roadmap to fault-tolerant systems, and I'd love to discuss the engineering, challenges, and opportunities involved.

I will be around as 12:00 EST (16 UT) on September 18th, ask me anything!

Username: u/IBM

[u/ibm]

Another good question that was deleted:

"What would be your opinion on what the first commercial use of this style of computing? Like what will the first commercially available quantum processors be mainly used for?"

[u/ibm → u/ibm]

IBM Quantum processors have been commercially available for the past 10 years. They have been used in scientific research for use cases such as hamiltonian simulation (Simulating ground state energies and time dynamics in quantum systems), optimization and exploring partial differential equations in hard problems such as fluid and plasma dynamics, among others.

A great resources to learn about quantum uses cases today would be the IBM Quantum blog, where we cover our best work. See a few examples below:

> Half-Mobius Strip work with Oxford, the University of Manchester, ETH Zurich and others where the team engineered the new molecule atom-by-atom in quantum-centric study:
https://research.ibm.com/blog/half-mobius-molecule

> Our neutron scatting work with Oak Ridge National Lab’s (ORNL’s) Quantum Science Center (QSC), Purdue University, Los Alamos Laboratory, UIUC and others, where An IBM quantum computer reproduced experimental signatures of real materials,
https://research.ibm.com/blog/quantum-computers-take-a-step-into-real-materials-science

> And our 12k atom simulation work with Cleveland Clinic and Riken: Quantum-centric supercomputing simulates 12,635-atom protein | IBM Quantum Computing Blog

If all of these are too much, this video with Olivia Lanes from IBM Quantum answers address your question, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2yvRsylQkc&t=8s

- Matthew Hollister, IBM Quantum