A second meeting with IBM’s business team took place on September 3, 2025, again at the UNIT building, this time focusing on quantum programming. The materials were presented by Dafinka Lazarova and Emil Melamed, and among the attendees were Prof. Krassen Stefanov, Prof. Vladimir Dimitrov, Assoc. Prof. Alexander Dimov, and Senior Assistant Prof. Dafinka Miteva, from the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at the Sofia University.
IBM Quantum is the IBM program for developing and delivering quantum computing as a service. It combines real quantum hardware, software tools, and a cloud platform to make quantum technologies accessible to researchers, businesses and universities. IBM Quantum is a leading initiative to transform quantum computing from an experimental technology into a practical and accessible service with the potential to change science, industry, and society.
Two key prerequisites for bringing useful quantum computing to the world are developing a quantum platform that goes beyond classical computing and activating a network of companies and academic institutions to encourage algorithm discovery.
The following key components of quantum programming were presented at the meeting:
- Qiskit – an open software package that serves as a bridge between the programmer and the quantum simulator, enabling developers and scientists to create, simulate, and execute quantum algorithms;
- Quantum bit, or qubit – the basic unit of information in quantum computing, analogous to the classical bit, but it can contain much more information and process many states simultaneously;
- Quantum circuit – the fundamental model for representing quantum computation. It serves as a framework that describes a sequence of operations applied to quantum bits to perform a given computation.
Three basic principles of quantum mechanics were also presented, which make quantum programming possible and give the quantum computers their power. These principles are closely related and are used together to build quantum algorithms:
1. Superposition – the property of a qubit to exist simultaneously in a combination of all its possible states; because, unlike a classical bit, which is either 0 or 1, a qubit can be both 0 and 1 simultaneously with certain probabilities.
2. Entanglement – a strong correlation between two or more qubits, in which they exist in a common quantum state and cannot be described separately.
3. Interference – the process by which the probability amplitudes of the qubits are amplified or attenuated, to increase the probability of obtaining the correct answer and reduce the probability of the wrong one.
An important moment in the history of IBM Quantum was the launch in 2016 of the first universal quantum computer, IBM Quantum Experience, available in the cloud. This was followed by a rapid development of Qiskit and a steady increase in the number of qubits in processors (e.g., Osprey with 433 qubits, Condor with over 1000 qubits). Currently, the focus is on creating systems that can execute quantum circuits with high precision and scope, which is impossible for classical simulation. And from here on, IBM is moving towards a quantum-centric supercomputing future, a hybrid system of quantum and classical computers.
IBM Quantum has applications in a wide variety of areas, such as nature simulation, traffic optimization, truck logistics, special drug development, and others.