IBM and University of Chicago achieve quantum advantage with 70 logical qubits in 15 minutes

Researchers from IBM and the University of Chicago reported a quantum computation that surpasses the practical limits of the best classical simulation techniques, finishing in roughly 15 minutes. By encoding 70 logical qubits with a novel error-correction strategy, the experiment executed a complex circuit involving thousands of logical operations while keeping logical error rates ten times lower than the underlying physical rates.

The work, detailed in the paper “Sampling hard circuits with verifiably high fidelity,” preserves the hardness of random circuit sampling yet adds structure that permits error detection during the run. Bill Fefferman highlighted the advance in verification, and Jay Gambetta declared that the field has entered a new era of quantum advantage. The results, along with the circuit data, have been made publicly available via the Quantum Advantage Tracker.