IBM to Open Quantum Data Center in Europe in 2024

One of the issues that is receiving more and more attention as the cloud computing trend continues is one of them Data Sovereignty. With increasing concerns over data security and data privacy, a number of laws and regulations have been enacted by various governments to regulate how data is transferred and stored across political boundaries. This is especially true in Europe where IBM has more than 60 European clients on its IBM Quantum Network who currently run much of their work in IBM’s quantum data center in Poughkeepsie, New York.

To address these issues, as well as expand its overall capacity for processing quantum jobs, IBM has announced it will create a second quantum data center at its facility in Ehningen, Germany. The data center is slated to come online in 2024 and will contain multiple utility-scale quantum processors, which IBM defines as having more than 100 qubits. This will help ease the concerns of customers in Europe who are concerned about data sovereignty issues as they will be able to carry out their work in data centers within the European Union.

However, the installation of another data center will not preclude a US-based customer from performing work in a European data center or a European customer from performing work in a US data center. IBM will also be an infrastructure component called Multi-Channel Scheduler which will schedule jobs at the most appropriate locations depending on user constraints. One instance where this might be necessary was when IBM initially put its most advanced systems online. For example, IBM recently placed an online 433 qubit Osprey system in a US data center in Exploration state. These state-of-the-art systems will initially only be available in US data centers and additional copies will be installed later in European data centers as the platform becomes more secure. And for customers who don’t care where their work is performed, there may be several possible advantages in reducing waiting time. Due to time zone differences, US customers who may ship jobs may submit jobs and run them at night in Europe when customer demand may be lower and systems are more available.

To learn more about IBM’s plans to set up a quantum data center in Europe, you can access their press announcement about it Here as well as a blog post providing additional background Here.

June 6, 2023