Research News

Cleveland Clinic is the first academic medical center in the US to build infrastructure for quantum-centric supercomputing through its partnership with IBM.  

By connecting the IBM Quantum System One on Cleveland Clinic’s main campus to the on-premises, high-performance computing (HPC) cluster, Cleveland Clinic and IBM enable researchers to effectively use a combination of classical and quantum computing approaches in their research projects. This is a milestone in Cleveland Clinic’s healthcare and life sciences research, driving further breakthroughs in fields like chemistry, life sciences and therapeutics development. 

IBM and Cleveland Clinic also upgraded the IBM System One’s quantum chip this fall. 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 technology is not only important to the future of research; it is important to the patients we see every day,” says Lara Jehi, MD, Cleveland Clinic’s Chief Research and Information Officer. “There are scientific bottlenecks in healthcare that have limited our ability to treat and prevent disease. By investing in this technology, we are providing our researchers and physicians with the best tools to advance discoveries and create a healthier future for everyone.”  

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 that build on using both types of computations. This can result in faster results than each computing method alone and is known 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.