Las Vegas, Nevada, USA · 8 January 2019
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, IBM unveiled the IBM Q System One, which the company described as the world's first fully integrated, circuit-based commercial quantum computing system. The announcement, delivered during IBM CEO Ginni Rometty's opening keynote, represented a significant step in the effort to move quantum computing from the bespoke, laboratory-bound setups that had characterised the field toward robust, self-contained systems suitable for commercial and scientific use.
A replica of the system was displayed on the CES show floor, drawing immediate attention for its striking design — a nine-foot-tall, nine-foot-wide airtight cube of half-inch thick borosilicate glass enclosing the quantum processor and its supporting cryogenic and electronic infrastructure.
The Engineering Challenge: Qubit Fragility
Quantum computers exploit the principles of quantum mechanics — superposition and entanglement — to perform calculations that would be intractable for classical computers. The fundamental unit of quantum information, the qubit, is extraordinarily fragile. Superconducting qubits, the type used in IBM's systems, typically lose their quantum properties within approximately 100 microseconds due to environmental interference — what physicists call "noise."
Sources of noise include mechanical vibrations, temperature fluctuations, and electromagnetic waves. Even minute disturbances can cause qubits to lose coherence, introducing errors into quantum computations. In a research laboratory, engineers can carefully control the environment around a quantum processor. But for a system intended for continuous commercial operation, maintaining that level of environmental isolation in a practical, serviceable package was an unprecedented engineering challenge.
Design and Architecture
IBM assembled a team of industrial designers, architects, and manufacturers to work alongside IBM Research scientists and systems engineers. The collaborators included UK-based industrial and interior design studios Map Project Office and Universal Design Studio, and Goppion, a Milan-based manufacturer of high-end museum display cases — the same company that built the protective enclosure for the Mona Lisa at the Louvre and the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London.
The IBM Q System One consolidated thousands of components into a glass-enclosed, airtight environment. Key design features included:
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Borosilicate glass enclosure: A nine-foot-tall, nine-foot-wide case of half-inch thick borosilicate glass forming a sealed, airtight environment that shields the quantum processor from environmental interference.
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Roto-translation mechanism: The glass enclosure opens using a motor-driven rotation around two displaced axes — a design that simplifies maintenance and upgrades while minimising system downtime, an essential feature for commercial operation.
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Independent framing: A series of independent aluminium and steel frames unify but also decouple the system's cryostat (the ultra-cold chamber housing the qubits), control electronics, and exterior casing. This decoupling helps prevent vibration interference that leads to phase jitter and qubit decoherence.
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Integrated components: The system comprised quantum hardware designed for stability and auto-calibration, cryogenic engineering delivering a continuous cold and isolated quantum environment, high-precision electronics in compact form factors, quantum firmware to manage system health and enable upgrades without downtime, and classical computation infrastructure for secure cloud access and hybrid execution of quantum algorithms.
The IBM Q System One, the world's first integrated quantum computing system designed for commercial use, unveiled at CES 2019. Credit: IBM Research
The 20-Qubit Platform and Cloud Access
At the time of the announcement, IBM Q System One integrated the company's existing 20-qubit quantum computing platform into the new self-contained package. The system was designed to be accessed via the cloud through the IBM Q Experience — a free, publicly available platform that had been continuously operating since May 2016.
The commercial IBM Q Network — a separate platform for business and science applications — had recently expanded to include Argonne National Laboratory, CERN, ExxonMobil, Fermilab, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, alongside a community of Fortune 500 companies, startups, academic institutions, and national research labs.
The Poughkeepsie Quantum Computation Center
Alongside the Q System One unveiling, IBM announced plans to open the IBM Q Quantum Computation Center for commercial clients in Poughkeepsie, New York, later in 2019. The choice of Poughkeepsie was deliberate: the site had a unique history in computing, stretching back to the development of IBM's first line of production business computers in the 1950s (the IBM 700 series) and the IBM System/360 in the 1960s. Poughkeepsie was also home to one of the world's most powerful classical systems — the IBM mainframe — and possessed the technical infrastructure, high-performance computing systems, and high-availability data centre needed to work alongside quantum computers.
The Poughkeepsie center opened in September 2019 with five 20-qubit quantum systems online, with plans to add additional systems including a 53-qubit quantum processor — at the time the most powerful quantum processor publicly available.
"The IBM Q System One is a major step forward in the commercialization of quantum computing. This new system is critical in expanding quantum computing beyond the walls of the research lab as we work to develop practical quantum applications for business and science." — Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President of Hybrid Cloud and Director of IBM Research
Potential Applications
IBM outlined several potential future applications for quantum computing, including:
- Financial modelling: Finding new ways to model financial data and isolate key global risk factors for better investment decisions.
- Logistics optimisation: Finding optimal paths across global systems for ultra-efficient logistics and fleet operations.
- Materials science and chemistry: Simulating molecular interactions that are intractable for classical computers, potentially leading to new materials, catalysts, and pharmaceuticals.
- Cryptography: Developing and testing quantum-resistant cryptographic protocols in anticipation of future quantum attacks on classical encryption.
The Broader Quantum Landscape in 2019
IBM's announcement came at a moment of intensifying global competition in quantum computing. Google was developing its own superconducting quantum processor (Sycamore), which would later claim quantum supremacy in October 2019. Rigetti Computing, IonQ, and other startups were pursuing alternative qubit technologies. China was investing heavily in quantum communication and computing infrastructure. The European Union had launched its Quantum Flagship programme in 2018 with a budget of €1 billion over ten years.
IBM's approach — combining hardware development with an open-source software ecosystem (Qiskit) and cloud-based access — was distinctive in its emphasis on building a user community and developer ecosystem alongside the hardware. By making quantum computers accessible to researchers and developers worldwide through the cloud, IBM aimed to accelerate the discovery of practical quantum algorithms and applications that would justify the technology's commercial viability.
Legacy and Evolution
The IBM Q System One became the template for IBM's subsequent quantum hardware deployments. In 2020, IBM installed a Q System One at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany — the first IBM quantum computer in Europe. Additional systems were deployed at research institutions in Japan, the United States, and elsewhere. IBM continued to increase qubit counts, introducing 65-qubit, 127-qubit (Eagle), 433-qubit (Osprey), and 1,121-qubit (Condor) processors in subsequent years, all following the integrated system philosophy established by the Q System One.
The system also became an icon of quantum computing's public image — its striking glass cube design appeared in countless media reports and became the visual shorthand for quantum computing in the popular imagination, helping to demystify a technology that had previously been accessible only to specialists.
Sources
- IBM Newsroom, "IBM Unveils World's First Integrated Quantum Computing System for Commercial Use," 8 January 2019 —
- IBM Research, IBM Q System One and IBM Q Network announcements, CES 2019
- Poughkeepsie Journal, "IBM opens Quantum Computation Center on Poughkeepsie campus," 18 September 2019
- HPCwire, "IBM Quantum Update: Q System One Launch, New Collaborators, and QC Center Plans," 10 January 2019
- Wikipedia, "IBM Q System One" —
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