Quantum chip developer IonQ Inc. today launched Superion 256, a 256-qubit quantum computer built around control chips made on standard semiconductor lines, which IonQ says lets it produce the systems in volume.
Superion 256 is IonQ’s sixth generation of quantum computer, and every future system is meant to sit on the same platform. IonQ pre-sold the first unit in the first quarter. Production machines will also run on the company’s cloud service.
The chips come from SkyWater Technology Inc., the foundry IonQ agreed to buy in January in a $1.8 billion deal. IonQ has fabricated its first fully integrated 256-qubit quantum processing units there and trapped ions in prototype systems now being assembled at several U.S. sites. The chip went through six tapeouts in the first half of 2026. Working with SkyWater’s quantum foundry cut the design cycle from nine months to two, the company said, and produced 12 times more wafer lots over six months than a previous foundry partner.
Electronic Qubit Control powers the system, a technology IonQ picked up with its $1.075 billion purchase of Oxford Ionics Ltd. last year. Trapped-ion machines have generally leaned on laser arrays for qubit control. On Superion the electronics sit on the chip.
IonQ’s 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity record, set in October, came off the same design. A Superion system occupies a standard server rack. Power draw is below that of a rack of graphics processing units, and the cooling ties into ordinary data center plumbing.
“Superion 256 is the first quantum computer platform designed to be built by the hundreds rather than one at a time,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Niccolo de Masi.
The platform is meant to carry the same ion qubits and the same control electronics from 256 qubits up to millions. Superion 10K, already in development, puts CMOS on the chip and is the first generation built to run Walking Cat, the fault-tolerant architecture IonQ published in April.
Chris Ballance, president of quantum computing at IonQ, called Superion “the most important inflection point the quantum computing industry has yet seen.” He put full fault tolerance in an IonQ lab at 2027 and a manufacturable commercial version at 2028. Dropping laser control is expected to cut cost per qubit by a factor of more than 300 across the roadmap.
IonQ also published a resource estimate today for running Shor’s algorithm against secp256k1, the elliptic curve behind bitcoin. Its researchers put the job at 19,397 physical qubits and 25.7 days, a footprint close to the machines on the 2028 stretch of the hardware roadmap.
Garrison Buss, chief technology officer and co-founder of post-quantum cryptography company QuSecure Inc., said the real target is elliptic-curve cryptography rather than bitcoin. Most public-key math on the internet migrated onto elliptic curves over the past 15 years, and the compact keys that made the migration efficient are what make the curves a cheaper quantum target. Code signing and certificate hierarchies rest on them. The estimate still assumes error rates nobody has demonstrated at that scale, Buss said in comments emailed to SiliconANGLE, “but the direction is not in doubt.”
Orders are open now, with the first customer deliveries due in 2027.
