11/11/2025
Updated quantum chip, high-performance computing connection to support Cleveland Clinic quantum computing research
Cleveland Clinic is upgrading its quantum infrastructure to improve the power and accuracy of the IBM Quantum System One located at Cleveland Clinic’s main campus.
As part of the Discovery Accelerator partnership, IBM provides Cleveland Clinic with its latest technology to help advance quantum computing, artificial intelligence and hybrid cloud computing efforts. This fall, the team installed a new next-generation processor – IBM's Quantum Heron chip – and connected quantum computing capabilities to the on-premises high-performance computing (HPC) cluster.
Why replace the quantum chip?
This is the first major upgrade to Cleveland Clinic’s IBM Quantum System One’s processor. The IBM Quantum Heron processor is IBM’s best performing quantum chip currently available to users today, which, in terms of quality and speed, is 10 times better than its predecessor, the previously installed utility-scale IBM Quantum Eagle.
Why is quantum-centric supercomputing important?
The second major upgrade is the integration of IBM Quantum System One with Cleveland Clinic’s on-premises HPC cluster through cloud-enabled architecture. HPC is a type of classical computing that runs multiple tasks simultaneously on a large number of computers or processors. The combination of classical computing and quantum computing can unlock new applications which build on using both types of computations. This can result in faster results than each compute method alone and is referred to as quantum-centric supercomputing.
The connected HPC and quantum computing systems create a unified environment that provides integrated access to quantum resources and enables researchers to run hybrid workloads that combine classical and quantum computation. This allows our researchers to explore problems that are inefficiently or inaccurately solved when relying on only one method of computing.
Our researchers are actively developing new applications and algorithms to use quantum-centric supercomputing approaches to tackle some of healthcare’s biggest challenges. To learn more about quantum computing progress at Cleveland Clinic, visit our quantum research pages.