About
Nestled in the Hudson Valley hills of Yorktown Heights, New York, the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center is IBM's flagship research laboratory and one of the most consequential computing and physics research centers ever built. Designed by architect Eero Saarinen and opened in 1961, its sweeping curved facade overlooks the Westchester countryside. From Landauer's principle and DRAM to fractal geometry, quantum cryptography, and quantum teleportation — and today as the world leader in superconducting quantum computing — Watson Research has continuously reshaped both science and technology at the most fundamental level.
Visit IBM Research ↗IBM Quantum
IBM Yorktown is the world's foremost superconducting quantum computing laboratory. The quantum processors are built from transmon qubits — superconducting circuits cooled to 15 millikelvin, colder than outer space — coupled together in the heavy-hex lattice topology IBM pioneered to minimize crosstalk errors. Every processor generation has pushed the boundaries of scale, fidelity, and connectivity, while the open-source Qiskit SDK (with millions of downloads) gives anyone on Earth tools to program them.
Processor Roadmap
2016
IBM Q Experience
5 qubits
First quantum computer on the cloud — opened quantum computing to the world
2019
Falcon
28 qubits
First processor with heavy-hex connectivity to reduce crosstalk errors
2020
Hummingbird
65 qubits
Demonstrated quantum advantage in specific sampling tasks
2021
Eagle
127 qubits
First processor to break the 100-qubit barrier using 3D packaging
2022
Osprey
433 qubits
Enabled new error mitigation techniques at scale
2023
Condor
1,121 qubits
First 1000+ qubit processor — a milestone for quantum volume
2024
Heron r2
156 qubits
Flagship quality processor — best error rates ever achieved by IBM
The Ecosystem
Qiskit
Open-source quantum SDK in Python. The world's most-used framework for writing, simulating, and running quantum circuits on real hardware. Millions of developers and researchers worldwide.
IBM Quantum Network
A global community of 250+ organizations — universities, national labs, startups, and Fortune 500 companies — with access to IBM's most advanced quantum systems for research and development.
Quantum Volume
IBM's holistic metric for quantum computer performance, capturing qubit count, connectivity, gate fidelity, and measurement errors in a single number. A standard that shaped how the industry talks about quantum advantage.
Error Mitigation
IBM Yorktown pioneered probabilistic error cancellation, zero-noise extrapolation, and Pauli noise learning — techniques that extract accurate results from today's noisy quantum processors without full fault-tolerant error correction.
Key Innovations from Yorktown Heights
1961 Landauer's Principle Rolf Landauer established the fundamental thermodynamic cost of erasing one bit of information — kT ln 2 joules. This deep link between physics and information theory became a cornerstone of quantum computing, reversible computing, and the thermodynamics of computation.
1966 DRAM — Dynamic Random Access Memory Robert Dennard invented DRAM, replacing expensive static memory cells with a single transistor and capacitor per bit. DRAM enabled cheap, dense, scalable computer memory and underpins virtually every computer, smartphone, and server on Earth today.
1973 Reversible Computing Charles Bennett showed that any computation can in principle be carried out reversibly — without erasing information, and therefore without dissipating heat. This result is foundational to quantum computing, where all quantum gates must be reversible by the laws of quantum mechanics.
1974 RISC Architecture John Cocke pioneered Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) at Watson Research. The concept — that processors executing fewer, simpler instructions run faster — became the dominant paradigm in modern chip design, forming the basis of ARM (powering all smartphones) and RISC-V.
1975 Fractal Geometry Benoit Mandelbrot, working at IBM Research from 1958 to 2005, developed fractal geometry — the mathematics of self-similar, infinitely complex shapes. His 1982 book "The Fractal Geometry of Nature" transformed mathematics, physics, computer graphics, financial modeling, and our understanding of natural forms.
1984 Quantum Key Distribution (BB84) Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard invented quantum cryptography — the BB84 protocol — demonstrating that quantum mechanics can enable provably secure communication. Any eavesdropper inevitably disturbs the quantum state and is detected. BB84 is the foundation of all quantum cryptography deployed today.
1993 Quantum Teleportation Protocol Bennett, Brassard, and colleagues published the first quantum teleportation protocol — showing that an unknown quantum state can be transmitted exactly from one location to another using shared entanglement and classical communication. Teleportation is now a key primitive in quantum networks and quantum computing.
2016 IBM Quantum Experience IBM made a real quantum computer publicly accessible via the cloud for the first time in history. What had been locked in research labs became available to anyone with a browser. This single move democratized quantum computing, seeding a global ecosystem of researchers, students, and developers — and launched the IBM Quantum Network.
Quantum Error Correction
Coming soon
Detailed information about IBM Yorktown's quantum error correction will be added here.
IBM Research Global Network
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Detailed information about IBM Yorktown's ibm research global network will be added here.
Notable Alumni
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Detailed information about IBM Yorktown's notable alumni will be added here.
Visiting & Collaboration
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Detailed information about IBM Yorktown's visiting & collaboration will be added here.