IonQ launching most powerful quantum computer system for commercial use

College Park-based quantum computing company IonQ said Monday it has expanded the commercial availability of its next-generation quantum computer IonQ Forte to customers worldwide.

The system has previously only been available to select clients since its creation in 2022.

With 32 physical qubits, a record algorithmic qubit count of #AQ 29, and the latest hardware integrations, IonQ Forte advances performance for new possibilities.

A few IonQ business partners, including Airbus, Hyundai Motor Company and Los Alamos National Lab, have already started running algorithms on IonQ Forte with promising initial results.

Airbus is using IonQ Forte to co-develop an aircraft loading optimization algorithm that uses 28 qubits to run a full variational optimization of a quantum circuit, the largest variational optimization performed on a QPU to date.

Building on its previous efforts on IonQ Aria, Hyundai will advance its state-of-the-art computational quantum chemistry methods on Forte QPU to achieve additional precision and leverage Forte’s computational capabilities to gain much deeper insight into chemistry.

Los Alamos National Laboratory successfully samples Boolean satisfiability problems on IonQ Forte using QAOA to study the scalability of QAOA on NISQ computation.

IonQ Forte is the third generation of quantum systems released by IonQ, following IonQ Aria (#AQ 25) and IonQ Harmony (#AQ 11). IonQ Forte substitutes an acousto-optical deflector (AOD) for the key control system of previous generations, resulting in more accurate qubit control signals and improved accuracy of quantum gate operations. This technology, which allows control lasers to be addressed to each qubit individually, also results in greater software configurability — a major advance over existing quantum computers. This unique approach makes IonQ Forte the highest performing IonQ system, capable of running wider and deeper circuits than any other commercially available IonQ quantum computer.

The commercial availability of IonQ Forte is part of IonQ’s larger vision to bring IonQ’s latest generation of large-scale quantum systems to consumers.