IBM has begun installing an on-premise quantum computer at a health provider’s data center in Ohio.

Cleveland Clinic and IBM said this month that deployment work of the first private sector onsite, IBM-managed quantum computer in the United States.

The IBM Quantum System One is to be located on Cleveland Clinic’s main campus in Cleveland. Announced in March 2021, the deployment is anticipated to be completed in early 2023.

“The current pace of scientific discovery is unacceptably slow, while our research needs are growing exponentially,” said Lara Jehi, M.D., Cleveland Clinic’s Chief Research Information Officer. “We cannot afford to continue to spend a decade or more going from a research idea in a lab to therapies on the market. Quantum offers a future to transform this pace, particularly in drug discovery and machine learning.”

First announced in 2019, the System One is enclosed in a nine-foot sealed cube, made of half-inch thick borosilicate glass. IBM has previously told DCD that the system installed will be the ‘latest generation of the device’ with between 50-100 qubits, but didn’t share power requirements for the system.

The healthcare provider has a 3MW, 263,000 sq ft data center in Brecksville, to the south of the city, but this will not be where the new System One will live but on a "secured site on Cleveland Clinic’s main campus in Cleveland,” the company told us.

Cleveland Clinic will also be home to the world’s first on-premise Q System Two – IBM’s ‘next generation 1,000+ qubit' system – in the future. The company's most powerful quantum chip is currently the 127-qubit Eagle, announced last year; the 433-qubit Osprey is due to launch sometime this year.

“A step change in the way we solve scientific problems is on the horizon,” said Dr. Ruoyi Zhou, Director, IBM Research - Cleveland Clinic Partnership. “At IBM, we’re more motivated than ever to create with Cleveland Clinic and others lasting communities of discovery and harness the power of quantum computing, AI, and hybrid cloud to usher in a new era of accelerated discovery in healthcare and life sciences.”

IBM operates a number of Quantum machines out of a data center in New York that it has made available through a portal, but has also signed agreements to install a number of on-premise facilities in Europe, Asia, and North America. It is also installing more machines at IBM facilities in various markets including Japan and Canada.

This month Oxford Quantum Circuits announced plans to deploy one of its quantum computers in a Cyxtera data center in the UK outside London. It is the first public deployment of a quantum system in a retail colocation facility.

D-Wave launches on AWS

This month D-Wave became the latest quantum vendor to offer its technologies through the cloud. The company last week announced it has launched in AWS Marketplace; offering real-time access to D-Wave’s quantum computers via its Leap Quantum Cloud Service as well as a number of consulting and other services.

“The era of commercial quantum computing is here. Forward-looking organizations are increasingly turning to quantum computing to find solutions for today’s complex and computationally intensive business problems, ultimately to reduce costs and increase revenue,” said Mark Snedeker, senior vice president of growth at D-Wave. “By launching in AWS Marketplace, we’re introducing our Leap quantum computing service to AWS customers, enabling them to quickly and easily start deriving business value from quantum computing, today.”

Companies such as IonQ operate their own data center in Maryland while its systems are also accessible through the likes of Azure and Google Cloud.

Other quantum companies available through AWS include IonQ, Rigetti, Xanadu, and OQC.