On November 6, 2026, IBM announced that an IBM Quantum System Two quantum computer powered by the Nighthawk processor is already up and running at Hyde Park Labs in Chicago. Hyde Park Labs is a research facility that also houses the University of Chicago, which provides the operations site for the system. IBM describes it as "the most advanced system we can offer today."
However, the system announced this time differs from the original plan. Under the plan that IBM and the State of Illinois announced in December 2024, the System Two in Chicago was to be equipped with the Heron processor and deployed within the following year. The actual launch was announced in November 2026, and the processor has changed to Nighthawk. IBM's news release does not explain the reason for the change and does not state the Nighthawk version, but the official blog published the same day specifies "Nighthawk r2."
Originally planned with Heron for 2025 deployment; Nighthawk-based launch announced in November 2026
The plan's starting point goes back to December 12, 2024. IBM and the State of Illinois announced plans to establish the "National Quantum Algorithm Center (NQAC)" in Chicago in partnership with universities and companies, and explained that an IBM Quantum System Two would be installed as its core facility. According to IBM's announcement at the time, the system would be equipped with the IBM Quantum Heron processor and deployed "in the coming year."
Facility preparations progressed in 2025. According to the local newspaper Hyde Park Herald, when Hyde Park Labs opened on September 16 of that year, the IBM Quantum System Two had been brought into the building's first floor, and installation of the system, equipped with the 156-qubit Heron, was underway. However, the paper's description of Heron drew on an article the University of Chicago published in 2024.
IBM's quantum processors then moved to a new generation. The Quantum Insider reported on January 13, 2026, that the first-generation Nighthawk (ibm_miami) was made available as early access to users on the Premium and Flex plans. On August 31, IBM announced on its official blog the general availability of the improved "Nighthawk r2." Then, on November 6, IBM, together with the University of Chicago, the State of Illinois, and the organization operating the quantum industry campus under construction, announced that the Nighthawk-equipped System Two is running at Hyde Park Labs. It is IBM's first quantum computer deployment in Illinois.
The main developments from the plan announcement to the launch announcement are as follows.
| Date | Event | Category | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| December 12, 2024 | Announced that a Heron-based System Two would be deployed in Chicago within the coming year | Original plan | IBM |
| September 16, 2025 | Hyde Park Labs opened; System Two installation underway on the first floor | Progress (reported) | Hyde Park Herald |
| January 13, 2026 | Early access to the first-generation Nighthawk reported | Product rollout (reported) | The Quantum Insider |
| August 31, 2026 | General availability of Nighthawk r2 began | Product rollout | IBM |
| November 6, 2026 | Announced that the Nighthawk-based System Two is running at Hyde Park Labs | Launch announcement | IBM, State of Illinois |
Taking the phrase "in the coming year" from the December 2024 announcement at face value, the original deployment target would have been around December 2025. IBM's formal launch announcement came on November 6, 2026. However, because the announcement does not give the exact date operations began, it is not possible to determine how much of a delay actually occurred. IBM has also not explained why it switched from Heron to Nighthawk.
Qubit count falls from 156 to 120, while couplers rise to 218
The Nighthawk now installed in Chicago is not simply a successor to Heron with more qubits. According to hardware specifications published by IBM, Heron r2 and r3 have 156 qubits. Nighthawk r2, by contrast, has 120 programmable qubits. Going by qubit count alone, the newer Nighthawk has 36 fewer.
A comparison of key specifications based on materials released by IBM and RIKEN and on reporting by The Quantum Insider is as follows.
| Processor | Qubits | Couplers | Circuit execution speed | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heron (r2, r3) | 156 | Up to 176 | About 4,000 per second | IBM, The Quantum Insider |
| First-generation Nighthawk | 120 | 218 | – | The Quantum Insider |
| Nighthawk r2 | 120 | 218 | Over 100,000 per second | IBM |
| RIKEN's Heron (Kobe) | 156 | – | – | RIKEN |
* "–" indicates that the referenced material does not give a corresponding figure. The Heron coupler count of "up to 176" is based on The Quantum Insider's reporting, not IBM's official specifications.
While the qubit count dropped, the number of couplers rose from Heron's maximum of 176 to Nighthawk's 218. That is an increase of about 24%, and The Quantum Insider also reported it as an increase of more than 20%. However, the 156-qubit specification for Heron applies to r2 and r3; the original Heron r1 had 133 qubits. Version differences like this need to be kept in mind when comparing generations.
This change in configuration relates to how the qubits are connected to one another. A coupler is a coupling element that controls interactions between qubits, and tunable couplers allow the strength of the coupling to be adjusted. According to IBM, Nighthawk arranges its qubits in a square lattice, with most qubits directly connected to four neighbors (up, down, left, and right). In earlier layouts, each qubit could connect directly to only two or three others. In other words, Nighthawk's design moves toward greater connectivity between qubits rather than a larger total number of qubits.
Improved connectivity also bears on the efficiency of running quantum circuits. When operations are performed between qubits that are not directly connected, additional gate operations may be needed, and greater connectivity may reduce them. However, actual performance depends not only on the number of connections but also on gate fidelity, error rates, and the structure of the circuit.
There is also a large difference in circuit execution speed. IBM says Nighthawk r2 can run more than 100,000 quantum circuits per second, more than 25 times Heron's roughly 4,000 per second. However, this is a figure IBM published as a specification of Nighthawk r2, and it is not stated to have been measured on the unit installed in Chicago.
IBM Quantum System Two has also been installed in Japan. At RIKEN's Center for Computational Science in Kobe, the first System Two outside the United States entered full operation on June 24, 2025. It is equipped with the 156-qubit Heron and is installed in the same building as the supercomputer Fugaku, connected to it by a low-latency network. Even under the same name, IBM Quantum System Two, the processor generation and configuration differ between Kobe and Chicago.
IBM's official blog reveals "Nighthawk r2"; performance claims remain IBM's own figures
In its November 6 news release, IBM introduced the processor as "IBM Quantum Nighthawk" and described it as "the most powerful quantum chip IBM has ever built." It also described the system as a whole as the most advanced it can currently offer. However, these are all IBM's own assessments, and the news release shows no results of performance comparisons conducted by third parties.
The announcement does not disclose the Nighthawk version or gate error rates, but details can be confirmed from other IBM public materials. IBM's official blog of the same date states that the Chicago system is an "IBM Quantum System Two equipped with a Nighthawk r2 processor." In the device list on the IBM Quantum Platform, the processor for "ibm_chicago," which represents the Chicago system, is also listed as Nighthawk r2, with 120 programmable qubits. At the time of checking on November 9, it was shown as online, and metrics related to error rates were also posted. However, these metrics are IBM's own measurement results.
Regarding Nighthawk r2's performance, IBM says it achieved a goal set in its 2026 technical roadmap. Specifically, it says it was able to accurately estimate expectation values for a quantum circuit containing 7,500 gates using probabilistic error amplification (PEA). PEA is one of the error mitigation techniques used to reduce the effects of noise.
However, the 7,500-gate figure is a result IBM says it achieved on Nighthawk r2, and it is not stated to have been measured on the Chicago system. Moreover, the number of gates in a quantum circuit alone does not determine how accurately arbitrary computations can be run. The circuit's structure, measurement methods, and the number of additional runs required for error mitigation are also important in evaluating performance.
In the announcement, IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna said the company can now deliver "scientifically useful results" to organizations in and beyond Illinois. However, the news release contains no data backing up that usefulness with specific computational problems or performance metrics. How well the Chicago system performs on real research problems will need to be confirmed through future usage records and external evaluation.
The "quantum advantage" announced by IBM and the University of Chicago used Heron
IBM and the University of Chicago announced on July 30, 2026, that they had demonstrated quantum advantage. According to IBM's announcement, the experiment used 70 logical qubits and completed its computation in about 15 minutes. However, when IEEE Spectrum reported on it the next day, July 31, the paper summarizing the results had not undergone peer review.
According to IEEE Spectrum, the experiment used the Heron processor, not Nighthawk. A logical qubit is a computational qubit that encodes information across multiple physical qubits so that errors can be detected and corrected. The experiment used a technique that discards the results of runs in which errors were detected, so a large number of runs was needed to collect enough valid results. Including the discarded runs, the number of required executions reached 860 times what would be needed if results were not discarded.
External experts have also weighed in on the significance of the research. Dominik Hangleiter, a researcher at ETH Zurich, told IEEE Spectrum that he found the structured-circuit approach adopted in the University of Chicago paper promising. However, a positive assessment of the research method should be distinguished from independent verification of the quantum advantage claim.
IBM later explained in its official blog on Nighthawk r2 that it had also run the same type of sampling experiment on r2. It has not, however, published specific figures showing the results. Meanwhile, the original paper was revised to a third version on arXiv on September 2, and the figures for the experiment's scale given in the abstract differ from what IBM announced in July.
Therefore, the quantum advantage result that IBM and the University of Chicago announced in July cannot be equated with a demonstration of the performance of the newly installed Nighthawk r2. The July result was based on an experiment using Heron and, at least as of IEEE Spectrum's reporting, was pre-peer-review research. Whether similar results can be reproduced on Nighthawk r2, and whether they can be applied to more practical computational problems, will require separate verification.
Chicago's System Two to move to the IQMP later; IBM plans Starling for 2029
The IBM Quantum System Two in Chicago will not remain permanently at the current Hyde Park Labs. According to IBM, the system will eventually be relocated to the "Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park (IQMP)" now under construction, where it will become the core facility of the NQAC. The NQAC is a quantum algorithm research and development hub whose establishment Illinois Governor JB Pritzker announced in 2024, with IBM participating as a key member. The State of Illinois also positions Hyde Park Labs as a temporary site until the IQMP is completed.
State funding has also gone into the installation. According to the State of Illinois's announcement, the state awarded a $25 million grant to the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, which represents the IQMP. The funds are being used to purchase the quantum computer, prepare its installation at Hyde Park Labs, and move it to the future IQMP. IBM's news release does not mention the grant amount.
The IQMP, the destination for the relocation, is being built on the former U.S. Steel South Works site in southern Chicago. According to a developer press release reprinted by The Quantum Insider, the site covers 128 acres (about 52 hectares), and PsiQuantum is planned to move in as the anchor tenant. The first phase of development, covering about 30 acres (about 12 hectares) of it, is scheduled for completion in 2027. However, the IBM and Illinois announcements do not state a specific timeline for moving the System Two from Hyde Park Labs to the IQMP.
IQMP CEO Harley Johnson has explained that the system will be housed at Hyde Park Labs while the campus is under construction and, once it is complete, moved to the IQMP to serve as the NQAC's core facility. The installation means that, in Illinois's effort to build out a quantum technology R&D hub, usable computing equipment has been secured ahead of the campus.
Meanwhile, IBM's quantum computer development roadmap calls for realizing the fault-tolerant quantum computer "Starling" in 2029. Starling aims to use 200 logical qubits to run quantum circuits of 100 million gates. A fault-tolerant quantum computer is a system that uses quantum error correction to continue long computations even when errors occur in the physical qubits.
The Nighthawk r2 now installed in Chicago is the current-generation processor supporting the technical development leading up to such fault-tolerant quantum computers. However, the circuit execution speed and the 7,500-gate experimental result that IBM has published are not enough to adequately assess technical progress toward Starling. Going forward, attention will focus on whether Nighthawk r2's performance is verified by third parties, what results the Chicago system produces in real research, and whether the move to the IQMP proceeds as planned.