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CLEVELAND, Ohio A shiny cylinder hanging upside down in a clear cube has put Cleveland at the forefront of quantum computing and medical innovation.

The cylinder is the IBM Quantum System One, an advanced quantum computer that can handle large amounts of data at lightning speeds. The Cleveland Clinic on Monday hosted a ribbon-cutting and reception to unveil the IBM Quantum System One in its new home on the Clinics main campus.

It is the first quantum computer in the world uniquely dedicated to healthcare research.

The Clinic will use the most advanced computational platform in the world to advance discoveries in medicine and health care, identify new medicines and treatments more quickly, and create jobs in technology, Clinic CEO Dr. Tom Mihaljevic said.

The IBM Quantum System One is the first private sector IBM-managed quantum computer in the United States.

This puts Cleveland on the cutting edge of anything happening on the planet, Ohio Lt. Governor Jon Husted said after cutting a ceremonial ribbon in front of the quantum computer with other dignitaries. About 200 leaders from the Clinic, politics, IBM, philanthropy and other sectors attended the reception.

The unveiling of the IBM quantum computer is a key milestone in a 10-year partnership between the Clinic and IBM, called the Discovery Accelerator. The partnership, first announced in 2021, is focused on advancing biomedical research through the use of high-performance computing, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, the Clinic said.

Husted recalled how he urged Clinic leaders to ask IBM for a quantum computer when he visited Cleveland for the presidential debate between then-President Donald Trump and Joe Biden in 2020.

Literally, this is the coolest thing on the planet, Husted said, referring to the quantum computers super-cooled interior. It can solve some of the most complex healthcare questions right here in Cleveland and Ohio.

Other dignitaries in attendance included Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown, IBM Senior Vice President and Director of Research Dario Gil, and IBM Vice Chairman Gary Cohn.

Quantum computing, which is still in development, is a new type of computing that is based on quantum phenomenon, not ones and zeros in a conventional computer. It will be able to crunch larger amounts of data at speeds that regular computers cant match.

Here is an explainer from Technology Review: Quantum machines are so powerful because they harness quantum bits, or qubits. Unlike classical bits, which represent either a 1 or a 0, qubits can be in a kind of combination of both at the same time. Thanks to other quantum phenomena, which are described in our explainer here, quantum computers can crunch large amounts of data in parallel that conventional machines have to work through sequentially. Scientists have been working for years to demonstrate that the machines can definitively outperform conventional ones.

The Clinics quantum computer is about three feet in diameter and five feet long.

Inside the quantum computers cylinder, qubits are arranged on a processor chip. Microwave packets of energy alter the qubits state to change the information that they store.

The microwave packets of energy are then sent through metallic tubes arrayed to look like a chandelier, explained Dr. Lara Jehi, chief research information officer for the Clinic.

The packets of energy travel to the quantum computers processor chip, which is cooled to temperatures near absolute zero in order to make them stable and able to hold information, Jehi said.

A researcher anywhere on the Clinic campus can communicate with the quantum computer using a conventional computer loaded with special software. Answers are translated back to ones and zeros, and sent to the conventional computer.

In a 2019 research paper, researchers at Google said its quantum computer could run a computation in 200 seconds that would take the worlds largest supercomputers 10,000 years to complete. Googles paper was published in the journal Nature.

At the Clinic, quantum computing will be used for chemical simulations for finding new molecules for drug use, understanding complex systems and sequencing genes in cancer cells, Jehi said previously.

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Cleveland Clinic unveils IBM quantum computer; partnership aims to accelerate healthcare innovation - cleveland.com