Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and IBM  officially unveiled the world's first-ever IBM quantum computer on a university campus. Building on RPI's bicentennial celebration of 200 years of firsts, IBM Quantum System One will significantly enhance educational and research opportunities for the university, as well as with other academic institutions and organizations across the New York region that wish to partner with RPI. Faculty, researchers, students, and collaborators accessing the system will aim to advance quantum computing research, including the search for quantum algorithms that could lead to quantum advantage, while also actively building the next generation of the quantum workforce alongside IBM.

The system at RPI was unveiled at a ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring remarks from RPI President Marty A. Schmidt '81, Ph.D.; IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna; Congressman Paul Tonko (NY 20); President of the University at Albany Havidán Rodríguez; Vice Chair of RPI Board of Trustees Curtis R. Priem '82; Board of Trustees Chair John E. Kelly, III '78G, '80Ph.D., D.H.L. (Hon.); and RPI Quantum Computing Club Co-President Michael Papadopoulos. Located in the university's historic Voorhees Computing Center Chapel, the IBM Quantum System One, along with endowed faculty positions, is the focal point of the Curtis R. Priem Constellation. The constellation, made possible with the philanthropic support of Curtis R. Priem '82, vice chair of RPI's Board of Trustees, will enable collaborative quantum computing research at RPI.

The new IBM Quantum System One at RPI is powered by a 127-qubit IBM Quantum 'Eagle' processor, to offer RPI's network of researchers, students and partners dedicated access to a utility-scale quantum computer. In 2023, IBM demonstrated the ability of IBM Eagle to produce accurate calculations beyond classical, brute-force simulation methods. Known as quantum utility, this signaled the start of an era in which quantum systems can serve as scientific tools to explore problems in chemistry, physics, materials, and other fields in the search for quantum advantage: the point at which a quantum computer can solve a problem better than any known classical method.

The system now online at RPI is joining IBM's global fleet of utility-scale quantum computers available via the cloud and at dedicated client sites, including systems in the United States, Canada, Germany and Japan, and installations in progress in South Korea and Spain. As quantum computing hardware and software continues to advance, RPI's world-class academic body of students, researchers, and faculty will progress the global race to discover increasingly complex quantum. RPI and IBM have a long-standing and storied history of collaboration to advance technology.

This includes RPI's current housing of the Artificial Intelligence Multiprocessing Optimized System (AiMOS). AiMOS is presently the most powerful classical supercomputer at a private university in the United States and is equipped with POWER9 CPU and NVIDIA GPU technology to enable users to explore new AI applications.