IBM and the Fraunhofer Institute in Munich, Germany, collaborating to bring a robust, technologically driven quantum computer that will define a new way of industrial application with the latest version of computation. The event to unveil the efforts had the “A Quantum Computing Journey in Germany” motto.
German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel honored the event as a guest speaker, and Dr. Arvind Krishna, CEO and Chairman of IBM, commenced the event with the opening speech. Many other delegates from politics and science were part of the event. Merkel pledged to invest 650 million Euros ($788 million) over two years as the project is crucial and relevant for the present need.
The partnership comes across as an enormous merge of two giants in the technology space. Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is an esteemed organization for applied research operating in more than 72 institutes across Germany with nearly 29000 employees who are qualified scientists and engineers. The annual budget of the organization is 3.4 billion USD, funded by contract research.
The IBM’s Quantum System one, which has only been in the New York data center until now, will be helpful to the Fraunhofer Institute from now on in research to develop chemistry, optimization, and machine learning. The institute is not entirely new for quantum; Fraunhofer Competence center for quantum computing is racing to conduct quantum research in several Fraunhofer institutes.
Although they planned it earlier, the collaboration did not commence due to the pandemic.
Dr. Jeffrey Welser is Vice President, Exploratory Science and University Partnerships for IBM. He said, “This announcement is the fruition of what we announced a long time ago with the Fraunhofer Institute partnership. We finally have the IBM Quantum System One up and running. It wasn’t easy because of Covid-19. We couldn’t travel to Germany, so we had teams working on it over here.”
The Vice President also mentioned that the installation is an exciting part of the plan for IBM and Fraunhofer aims to find quantum use cases in various fields, including governments. Furthermore, IBM points out the installation to be the latest example of momentum in the quantum industry. Studies suggest the Quantum computing market share is projected to increase from USD 472 million in 2021 to USD 1,765 million by 2026, at a CAGR of 30.2%.
IBM has a massive quantum footprint with more than 20 quantum computers installed, the new hub with Fraunhofer installation will propel the research and build the community of experts.