Quantum Computers Just Turned 800 Times More Reliable

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Quantum computing company Quantinuum and tech giant Microsoft claim they reached an “unprecedented” breakthrough in quantum computing reliability, drastically reducing error rates and physical qubits required for a single logical qubit.

A press release claims the two companies have “demonstrated the most reliable logical qubits on record,” a breakthrough achieved by applying a qubit visualization system with error diagnostics and correction to Quantinuum’s hardware.

“We ran more than 14,000 individual experiments without a single error. Furthermore, we demonstrated more reliable quantum computation by performing error diagnostics and corrections on logical qubits without destroying them,” Microsoft said.

Cybernews explains that while previously, 300 physical qubits were required to create just four logical qubits on Quantinuum’s hardware, now only 30 physical qubits are required. The two companies also claim to have demonstrated an 800 times improvement between the physical and logical qubit reliability, representing “the largest gap” to date.

Quantinuum stated: “Quantum computing has taken a major step into a new era, introducing reliable logical qubits which will soon be available to industrial and research users.” Microsoft further explains that with a hybrid supercomputer that is powered by 100 reliable logical qubits, organizations would start to see scientific advantage, while scaling closer to 1,000 reliable logical qubits would unlock commercial advantage.

While Quantinuum’s machine has only 32 physical qubits producing 4 logical ones, the company expects to support at least 10 highly reliable logical qubits by 2025. In the short term, Quantinuum believes that organizations with a hybrid supercomputer powered by a hundred reliable logical qubits will be able to start to see scientific advantages and accelerate valuable progress toward some of the most important world problems (like aiding in the battle against the climate crisis, create clean energy, or accelerate the development of AI language models).