IBM has made its powerful five qubit quantum processor available to the public for free in a move it described as "the birth of quantum cloud computing."

IBM said its quantum cloud computing service (called IBM Cloud Bluemix) is accessible on any mobile device or desktop. The company's cloud-enabled quantum computing platform named the "IBM Quantum Experience" is the first quantum hardware available to the public.

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IBM will provide a programming interface and the capability to run experimental programs on this quantum processor. It has developed its own quantum chip running at five qubits. 

IBM Quantum Experience was designed by IBM so users can use quantum bits (abbreviated as qubits) to run algorithms and experiments on this platform. A qubit is a unit of quantum information analogous to the digital "bit," the basic unit of information in computing and digital communications normally represented as either a 0 or 1.

Qubits allow computers to perform a lot more complex calculations a lot faster than is possible with today's fastest supercomputers. On the other hand, quantum computers are considerably faster than any of today's PCs and servers and will radically change the way computers are developed and built in the future.

The actual super computer running the IBM Quantum Experience is located at the IBM Research Lab in New York State.

IBM believes its Quantum Experience will be useful material and drug design, optimization and other commercially important applications that demand power unavailable in common digital computers. The quantum processor is powerful enough to take on a variety of research and other computations.

IBM also hopes this service will help increase in interest and understanding of quantum computing while building a community of users that can work together to advance knowledge about quantum computers. Another goal of Quantum Experience is to train users in programming for quantum computers.

TagsIBM, quantum processor, IBM Cloud Bluemix, IBM Quantum Experience, IBM Research Lab, qubit, quantum bits