Welcome to the Church of Quantum

The facility is the Voorhees Computing Center on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), just outside Albany, New York. RPI unveiled its new IBM Quantum System One at an event at the center, celebrating the first time an IBM quantum computer has been installed on a university campus.

The event was attended by a raft of dignitaries from RPI, IBM, and local government, all of whom are invested in shaping the future of computing in the United States, and quantum’s undoubted role in that. New York Representative Paul Tonko, IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishina, along with RPI President Marty A. Schmidt, Chairman John Kelly (also a former director of IBM Research), and Vice-chairman and Nvidia cofounder Curtis Priem all celebrated the unveiling of the new system at the event.

RPI’s new quantum computer is powered by IBM Quantum’s 127-qubit Eagle processor, a device that the team showed has ushered in the age of quantum utility. A group of researchers demonstrated last year that an Eagle processor could produce accurate calculations beyond classical, brute-force simulation methods. The system is now online and running, and RPI’s network of researchers, students, and partner organizations will now have dedicated access to a system that they can use to explore pressing problems in chemistry, physics, materials science, among other potential use cases.

The Voorhees center was originally built as a chapel in 1933, next to RPI’s seminary. As the campus expanded in the 1970s, there was a need for more lecture halls, libraries, and other facilities. Instead of razing the chapel for a new computing center, faculty and students had voiced interest in repurposing the space as the computing center itself. And it’s easy to see why, with the ornate granite surfaces and beautiful windows. RPI’s former president, George Low, once called the facility “the most unique computing center in the world.”

Discover more at IBM research