NEW YORK: International Business Machines Corp on Wednesday said it launched its most powerful quantum computer to date called the Osprey, a 433-qubit machine that has three times the number of qubits than its Eagle machine announced last year.

The number of qubits, or quantum bits, are an indication of the power of the quantum computer which uses quantum mechanics, although different quantum computer companies make different claims about the power of their qubits which can be created many different ways.

Quantum computers are one day expected to speed up certain calculations millions of times faster than the fastest super computers today.