Updated

IBM plans to offer access in 2027 to a quantum system that links two 520-qubit chips, Ars Technica reported on November 11, 2026. The company said it intends to link the two chips before next year is over. The system would total 1,040 programmable qubits, close to the 1,080 in its earlier roadmap, which had called for linking nine 120-qubit Nighthawk chips. The change came during IBM's Quantum Developer's Conference, where the company updated its roadmap toward error-corrected quantum computers before the decade is out. The next-generation Nighthawk processor line is being expanded with a version of more than 500 programmable qubits, and the planned number of linked systems was cut from nine to two. Ars Technica reported that the change reflects possible difficulty with chip-to-chip communication, though IBM executives gave no indication of such problems. Oliver Dial, a VP of Quantum Systems, cited a demonstration of four L-couplers joining two Nighthawk R1 processors, with state transfer fidelities of up to 99.4 percent. The plan would expand the scale of quantum hardware available to users.