IQM Kart: Radiance vs Halocene
Which "item" should you use?
If you’ve ever played Mario Kart, you know that you can throw a Green Shell or a Red Shell. You can actually throw lots of stuff, including a Blue Shell, but I humbly beseech the Karters out there to grant my analogy some leeway.
Anyway, if you’ve managed to pick up a Green Shell and a Red Shell, and you haven’t played the game before, you’re likely wondering about the difference. How should you use the Green Shell and how should you use the Red Shell?
The short answer is that the Green Shell shoots straight and fast and ricochets off the walls. It can be tricky to aim, but it’s hard to defend against once you’re skilled. The Red Shell locks onto your nearest opponent, so you don’t have to aim at all, but it’s slower and easier to defend against. They’re both shells, but they have different use cases.
So, when you’re playing IQM Kart (they’re not calling it that) and you’ve got an option to use Radiance or Halocene, how should you use Radiance and how should you use Halocene?
The short answer is that Radiance is meant for HPC integration and executing NISQ algorithms, while Halocene is meant for quantum error correction and mitigation research. They’re both superconducting quantum computers, but they have different use cases.
Radiance has been available for a while, and the new Halocene will launch in 2026 with 150 qubits and will eventually scale to 1,000 qubits. Target audiences are research organizations and universities, as well as supercomputing centers, where IQM fares quite well (I’m tracking).
FUN FACT: While multiple quantum computer product lines are not unique to IQM, they are rare, and this is the only split of this sort that I’m aware of.
Technically, by the way, IQM Kart has a Blue Shell as well: IQM Spark is a 3rd product line that is aimed at physics research and fundamental QC technologies development. However, it has 5 qubits, so you’re more likely to ask why you’d use this 150-qubit device or that 150-qubit device than you would this 150-qubit device or that 5-qubit device, hence the 2-shell analogy.
In the words of Mario, “Let’s-a go!”
Filed under: Quantum Computing • Superconducting Qubits • HPC
Image generated by an AI model provided by Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI’s DALL·E, and Google’s language model AI.
IQM Radiance for HPC integration