It is very irritating when people complain here that it's not faster than classical or other such complaints.
Please, it is still a research project, it's not like a regular computer just faster, it is novel research.
Regarding the quantum side, I would love to know if by programmable qubit are they referring to an error corrected qubit or just one where gates can be applied.
I suspect it means error corrected qubits. I was wondering if there was work being done on algorithms that are noise resistant and as such can take advantage of the raw qubit count instead of the error corrected qubit count.
I would love to work in this area but I think it's all research at the moment. It's really interesting, how it actually works, not just the hand wavy abstractions.
Programmable qubit is almost certainly referring to one where gates can be applied, non-error-corrected. The error correction overhead would be much larger than 4-to-1.
Although note, the above is if you are referring to error correction in the traditional sense of error correcting codes. According to Ars Technica's article [1], the non-programmable qubits are being used for leakage removal: coupling to the computational/programmable qubits and stabilizing them, but not being used for any computation themselves. This is far from error correcting codes in the mathematical sense, but it does have a similar purpose of reducing noise.
For what you are wondering about in your penultimate sentence is possible for any algorithms, I am not sure, but it's a very good question. However, I know that for general algorithms, there is a range of error reduction techniques you can use short of full QEC, IBM has a decent blog post about them [2]. Usually, the trade-off is error reduction vs increased number of shots and post-processing (so vs time, not space).
It's better to think of QPUs as highly specialized coprocessors that do certain things really well. You would only every really use them for problems they're good at. Like ALU vs FPU vs GPU.
Is this new processor capable of achieving reliable and practically useful results beyond the capabilities of classical machines? The answer is almost certainly, no.
Yes, and this was true starting with IBM Boston. I think anything before Dec 2025 could be picked apart as too noisy in particular due to crosstalk problems, for example on Pittsburgh. From the IBM Boston QPU build to the R2s, the fidelity allows for compute beyond what classical computers can do for quantum applications.
Perhaps, but it's highly unlikely it can outperform classical machines. If it actually had that capability, it would be front and center in the announcement.
Please, it is still a research project, it's not like a regular computer just faster, it is novel research.
Regarding the quantum side, I would love to know if by programmable qubit are they referring to an error corrected qubit or just one where gates can be applied.
I suspect it means error corrected qubits. I was wondering if there was work being done on algorithms that are noise resistant and as such can take advantage of the raw qubit count instead of the error corrected qubit count.
I would love to work in this area but I think it's all research at the moment. It's really interesting, how it actually works, not just the hand wavy abstractions.
Although note, the above is if you are referring to error correction in the traditional sense of error correcting codes. According to Ars Technica's article [1], the non-programmable qubits are being used for leakage removal: coupling to the computational/programmable qubits and stabilizing them, but not being used for any computation themselves. This is far from error correcting codes in the mathematical sense, but it does have a similar purpose of reducing noise.
For what you are wondering about in your penultimate sentence is possible for any algorithms, I am not sure, but it's a very good question. However, I know that for general algorithms, there is a range of error reduction techniques you can use short of full QEC, IBM has a decent blog post about them [2]. Usually, the trade-off is error reduction vs increased number of shots and post-processing (so vs time, not space).
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/11/ibm-to-offer-access-...
[2] https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/qec-continuum
I however no knowledge of the subject other than that you can turn a binary bit in to a 2.
IBM has an advantage tracker that needs more submissions https://quantum-advantage-tracker.github.io/