The EU gets its first Heron r3

Maintenance has been completed on ibm_aachen and the QPU is now back online in the eu‑de region. ibm_aachen has also been upgraded to be the first QPU in the EU to feature the latest Heron r3 processor. It is the third r3 in our global fleet, after ibm_boston and ibm_pittsburgh in the US.

Heron r3 continues to deliver improved error rates and overall system performance compared to Heron r2, demonstrating more reliable execution and better results for workloads. For example, on ibm_aachen, we observe a large boost in $T_2$ (phase coherence time) from 150 µs to 250 µs. You can view metrics like these for all QPUs in the shared fleet on the Compute resources page.