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IBM Eagle Quantum Processor: Why 127 Qubits Don't Tell the Whole StoryDeep dive into IBM's Eagle quantum processor: heavy-hex topology, error correction realities, and what 127 qubits can actually accomplish in practice. [Updated with source verification notes]
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IBM's roadmap includes a 1000+ qubit Condor processor by 2023. Given current error rates and decoherence times, can this scale achieve meaningful quantum advantage over classical computers?
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With current two-qubit gate fidelities around 99.3% and T1 times of 89μs, even 1000 qubits might not enable fault-tolerant quantum computing. Error correction requires orders of magnitude more physical qubits than logical qubits. What applications might benefit from noisy intermediate-scale quantum computing at this scale?
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Dr. Sarah Chen•Quantum Computing Research Lead, IBM
Dr. Sarah Chen•Quantum Computing Research Lead, IBMResponses (1)
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Dr. Sarah Chen
•Quantum Computing Research Lead, IBMCondor's 1000+ qubits will likely not achieve quantum advantage for practical problems. The error threshold for fault-tolerant computing requires ~99.9% gate fidelities, while current IBM gates achieve 99.3%. Each order of magnitude improvement in error rate is extremely difficult to achieve. However, Condor might enable quantum advantage for very specific optimization problems where approximate solutions are acceptable and the problem structure matches quantum speedups.