IBM says it aims at constructing commercial IBM Q quantum computing systems with ~50 qubits in the next few years, delivered via the company’s cloud platform.

IBM Q systems will be designed to tackle problems that are currently seen as too complex and exponential in nature for classical computing systems to handle. One of the first and most promising applications for quantum computing will be in the area of chemistry, says the company. Scientists have developed techniques to explore the simulation of chemistry problems on quantum processors. For example, this and this are experimental demonstrations of various molecules are in progress.

IBM also released the API for its quantum computing services that it says enables developers and programmers to begin building interfaces between its existing five quantum bit (qubit) cloud-based quantum computer and classical computers, without needing a deep background in quantum physics. The company says it plans to release a full SDK on its quantum experience in the first half of 2017.

Since its launch less than a year ago, about 40,000 users have run over 275,000 experiments on its quantum experience, according to IBM.

[Image courtesy: IBM]