Hacker News

IBM Spins Off the First Pure-Play Quantum Chip Foundry

40 points by rbanffy 4 hours ago | 8 comments

dvh 43 minutes ago

Can the chips they plan to make there run Shor?

The real story isn't the $2B. It's that the foundry is standalone, so other quantum hardware companies can use it. Shared infrastructure beats nine separate research cleanrooms.

Zigurd 49 minutes ago

Is there enough agreement regarding what is a quantum chip, and what process technology is necessary to make one?

imglorp 22 minutes ago

Is there any agreement regarding real applications that warrant fab volume or is this still speculation?

bawolff 20 minutes ago

There is high agreement on what the real applications of Quantum computing are. Unfortunately these projects are basically useless when it comes to them.

icegreentea2 10 minutes ago

Can you clarify? Do you mean that superconducting qubits are unable to perform the "real applications" theoretically, or that superconducting qubits at the scale this foundry could produce will be unable, or that superconducting qubits that will foundry could produce will still be outperformed by classical techniques?

bawolff 9 minutes ago

I mean, we are no where near the scale [qubit count] & quality where the applications apply. Not just this foundry but in general. I suppose the point is to eventually get there, but we are not close yet.

You should still view anything Quantum as early R&D.

stogot 2 hours ago

The article talks about IBM spreading bets to other techniques. Reminds me to ponder again. Has Microsoft retracted their sketchy quantum claims about inventing new states of matter in the past year? https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2025/03/12/microsofts-qu...