RPI Upgrades IBM Quantum System One with Advanced Nighthawk r1 Chip
The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has upgraded its IBM Quantum System One to use the more advanced Nighthawk r1 chip. The upgrade was made in August 2026, replacing the Eagle processor that had been used since April 2024.
Research Scientist Dr. Cameron Cogburn explained that the previous Eagle chip's circuit noise caused results to diverge from expected physical interactions. In contrast, the Nighthawk r1 produced output closely matching numerical solutions for calculations modeling kink-anti-kink potentials in quantum chromodynamics.
The key difference between the two chips lies in their qubit arrangement. The Nighthawk r1 features a two-dimensional grid, allowing each qubit to have three to four neighbors, which reduces the need for SWAP operations that introduce additional noise into calculations.