IBM has announced a bold new milestone in the race to build powerful quantum computers: it plans to launch IBM Quantum Starling, a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum system, by 2029 — years ahead of what many experts believed possible.

Once operational, IBM predicts the Starling system will be capable of executing 20,000 times more operations than current quantum machines, entering a computational realm so immense it would demand more memory than a quindecillion (10⁴⁸) of today’s supercomputers combined.

“IBM is charting the next frontier in quantum computing,” said CEO Arvind Krishna. “Our multidisciplinary expertise is paving the way for quantum systems that can solve real-world problems and unlock transformative business potential.”

A Credible, Yet Ambitious Roadmap

IBM’s goal is ambitious, but not without precedent. The company has consistently hit key milestones on its quantum roadmap, particularly around qubit scalability and error correction — both essential to achieving fault tolerance.

“They’re addressing the right challenges, and their progress so far has been impressive,” said Ensar Seker, CISO at cybersecurity firm SOCRadar. “But scaling from thousands to millions of physical qubits with sufficient fidelity will be a significant hurdle.”

Quantum computers process information using qubits, which, unlike traditional bits, can represent both 0 and 1 simultaneously due to quantum superposition. However, quantum systems are highly sensitive to error. IBM aims to counter this by clustering physical qubits into logical qubits — more stable units capable of error correction in real time.

Industry Experts Take Note

Luke Yang, an equity analyst at Morningstar, believes IBM’s timeline is plausible. “While exact performance details may change, their vision is credible,” he said.

Enrique Solano, co-founder of quantum algorithm company Kipu Quantum, echoed that sentiment: “IBM isn’t prone to overhyping. They might fail — hardware complexity is unpredictable — but their track record deserves recognition.”

Tim Hollebeek, VP of industry standards at DigiCert, added: “This isn’t research anymore — it’s an engineering scaling challenge. And IBM has shown it’s up to the task.”

John Young, COO of Quantum eMotion, noted that IBM has committed $30 billion over five years to quantum development. “Still, achieving true, industrial-grade fault tolerance remains a very high bar.”

Cracking the Code of Error Correction

One of the central hurdles to fault-tolerant quantum computing is reducing errors. Logical qubits, formed from clusters of thousands of physical qubits, are key to running large workloads reliably — but scaling this approach has been a challenge.

IBM’s announcement includes two technical research papers detailing how it plans to overcome this bottleneck. The first introduces quantum low-density parity check (qLDPC) codes, which dramatically reduce the number of physical qubits required. The second presents real-time decoding strategies using classical computing to manage quantum errors during execution.

According to IBM, a viable fault-tolerant quantum system must:

Suppress enough errors to execute meaningful algorithms
Prepare and measure logical qubits mid-computation
Execute universal operations on logical qubits
Decode errors and adapt actions in real time
Scale across hundreds or thousands of logical qubits
Operate efficiently with manageable energy and infrastructure costs

A Market and Security Wake-Up Call

Beyond technological challenges, IBM and the broader quantum community face questions around real-world applications. As Morningstar’s Yang noted, the most powerful quantum workloads today — such as random circuit sampling (RCS) — have limited commercial value. “Finding truly impactful use cases remains a challenge,” he said.

Meanwhile, IBM’s accelerated timeline brings new urgency to cybersecurity. The hypothetical “Q-Day” — when quantum computers can crack existing encryption — may arrive sooner than expected.

“This move compresses the post-quantum encryption window,” said Dave Krauthamer, CTO at QuSecure. “Organizations must integrate quantum-safe encryption into their strategies now — not later.”

Roger Grimes of KnowBe4 warned that U.S. businesses may be dangerously underprepared. “IBM’s announcement should shake up anyone relying on the government’s 2030 target for post-quantum cryptography readiness. Most companies aren’t ready, and that’s a major risk.”

With multiple quantum companies reporting breakthrough progress, he added, “it’s clear something’s going to give. And if I were betting on it — I’d say most U.S. firms won’t be ready when Q-Day hits.”

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