In what scientists are calling a "generational leap," a joint team from MIT and IBM has unveiled a quantum processor containing 10,048 functional qubits — more than ten times the previous record. The Condor-X chip, announced Monday at the American Physical Society meeting in Boston, maintained coherence for over 1.2 milliseconds, long enough to perform meaningful calculations.
The breakthrough addresses a problem that has plagued quantum computing for decades: scaling up qubit count without introducing catastrophic error rates. By using a novel error-correction scheme based on topological codes, the team achieved a logical error rate below the threshold needed for practical computation.
"This changes the timeline for everything," said Dr. Priya Narayanan, who leads IBM's quantum hardware division. "Problems that we thought were five to ten years away — protein folding simulations, catalyst optimization, cryptographic applications — are now within reach."