Overview
- Researchers from Cleveland Clinic, IBM, and RIKEN used a quantum–classical workflow to model protein–ligand systems of up to 12,635 atoms, a record scale for quantum hardware.
- Two IBM Heron quantum processors worked with the Fugaku and Miyabi-G supercomputers, targeting protein–ligand complexes, which are proteins bound to small drug-like molecules in water.
- The workflow split the job so classical machines broke molecules into fragments, quantum devices computed the hardest electronic pieces, and supercomputers recombined results in exchanges that ran for more than 100 hours.
- The simulations reached about 40 times the size of prior quantum-hardware studies and produced energy estimates competitive with common methods without showing clear overall superiority.
- The team reported up to a 210-fold accuracy gain in one step over six months and used up to 94 qubits across two devices to run 9,200 circuits and gather 1.3 billion measurements.