IBM has launched a new quantum system, dubbed Aachen.

The system offers 156 qubits provided by the company’s Heron r2 processor, according to David Faller, managing director, IBM Germany R&D.

Writing on LinkedIn, Faller said the system is available to the company’s clients via the IBM Quantum Cloud Platform in its European IBM Quantum Data Center, south of Stuttgart, Germany.

“Aachen complements our quantum systems Strasbourg and Brussels, which have been available since the end of June 2024, each with 127 qubits of the Eagle processor generation. It is also one of the fastest Quantum Systems in our fleet to date,” Faller wrote. “Our German Quantum hardware team from the IBM R&D Lab in Böblingen was instrumental in installing and calibrating the new chip. Congratulations and a big thank you to everyone for the great work.”

IBM first unveiled the 133 fixed-frequency qubit IBM Quantum Heron processor in December 2023, stating at the time that Heron “yields a 3-5× improvement in device performance” and a five-fold improvement in error reduction over IBM’s previous flagship 127-qubit Eagle processors.

As of early 2025, IBM has 13 utility-scale quantum computers – systems containing more than 100 qubits – operational in Poughkeepsie, NY; its German data center; and in client locations around the world.

In total, the company claims to have deployed just shy of 80 quantum systems since 2016, more than the rest of the world combined, according to publicly available data cited by IBM.

In February 2025, it was reported that between Q1 2017 and Q4 2024, IBM had almost hit $1 billion of signings since the inception of its quantum unit in the first quarter of 2017.

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ibm-launches-aachen-a-156-qubit-quantum-system-powered-by-heron-r2-processor/