Yonsei Upgrades to Next-Gen IBM Quantum System with 40% Capacity Gain

Yonsei University in South Korea is upgrading its on-premises IBM Quantum System One facility. The upgrade, scheduled for November 2026, will replace the current 127-qubit IBM Eagle quantum processing unit (QPU) with a new 120-qubit Nighthawk QPU. This makes Yonsei the second facility globally, after IBM Miami, to host a Nighthawk-based quantum computer.

The upgrade features a change in physical topology and interconnect design. The current heavy-hex layout of the Eagle QPU will be replaced with a square lattice structure for the Nighthawk QPU, giving each qubit four direct connections via 218 tunable couplers. This improvement is expected to result in a 40% gain in computational capacity at equivalent fidelity levels.

The university is actively deploying its QPU in a hybrid workflow with RIKEN's Fugaku supercomputer to study target mechanisms for Leigh syndrome, a severe genetic neurological disorder. The hybrid division of labor will allow the QPU to filter key chemical candidate spaces before offloading heavy classical processing, compressing long-term simulation timelines from decades to days.

To drive commercial application adoption, Yonsei will launch 'Q-Bridge', a quantum-classical integration software platform and domain-specific algorithm repository. The initiative is also forming dual research nodes in collaboration with the University of Cambridge to apply Nighthawk-based quantum algorithms to AI-driven drug discovery and stem cell research.