IBM Research published peer-reviewed results on Friday demonstrating the first practical computation performed on a quantum processor exceeding 1,000 high-quality qubits – a milestone that the quantum computing field has been working toward for years and that represents a meaningful step toward the threshold at which quantum computers begin to solve problems that are genuinely intractable for classical computers. The result, published simultaneously in Nature and presented at a research conference in Zurich, describes a 1,121-qubit processor called Condor-2 that achieves a quantum volume of 2,048 – the most commonly used measure of overall quantum computing capability – which IBM’s researchers claim represents the highest quantum volume ever demonstrated on a commercial quantum processor by a factor of approximately four.

Quantum computing operates on principles that differ fundamentally from classical computing, using quantum mechanical phenomena including superposition (the ability of a quantum bit to exist in multiple states simultaneously) and entanglement (correlations between qubits that have no classical equivalent) to perform certain categories of computation exponentially faster than any classical computer could. The practical challenge in building useful quantum computers is that qubits are extraordinarily fragile – they must be isolated from environmental disturbances to a degree that requires cooling to near absolute zero temperature and sophisticated error-correction systems that consume a significant fraction of the available qubit resources just to maintain computation fidelity. The 1,121 ‘high-quality’ qubits in IBM’s Condor-2 result refers to qubits operating with low enough error rates to be useful for computation after error correction overhead is applied – a meaningfully different and more demanding standard than simply counting total physical qubits on a chip.

What the Milestone Means Practically

• The Condor-2 processor can simulate molecular systems of approximately 50 atoms with chemical accuracy – the threshold at which quantum chemistry simulations begin to provide information about molecular behaviour that is difficult or impossible to obtain from classical simulations.
• IBM’s researchers demonstrated optimisation calculations relevant to logistics and supply chain problems at scales where quantum processing provided a measurable advantage over the best available classical algorithms running on the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
• Financial modelling applications tested on Condor-2 showed quantum speedups for certain Monte Carlo simulation tasks, though the practical advantage in real trading environments requires further characterisation and validation.
• The processor does not yet achieve ‘quantum supremacy’ for general computation but crosses the threshold for specific, well-defined problem classes relevant to materials science, drug discovery and cryptography.
• IBM has made access to Condor-2 available through its IBM Quantum Network for research institutions and commercial partners, with the company’s quantum-as-a-service model allowing organisations to run quantum workloads without investing in their own hardware.

The Competition: Google, Microsoft and Startups

IBM’s 1,000-qubit milestone arrives in a quantum computing landscape that has become one of the most competitively watched areas in all of technology, with multiple well-funded organisations pursuing different technological approaches to quantum processing. Google’s quantum computing programme, which made headlines in 2019 with its ‘quantum supremacy’ demonstration on a 53-qubit processor, has been pursuing a different architectural path from IBM and has published results on its Willow processor that demonstrate exceptional error rates on specific circuit types. Microsoft has staked its quantum computing strategy on a topological qubit approach that theoretically offers better error rates than the superconducting qubits used by IBM and Google, though the topological approach remains at an earlier stage of development with fewer validated large-scale results.

A number of well-funded quantum computing startups – including IonQ (which uses trapped ion qubits), Quantinuum, Rigetti and PsiQuantum – are pursuing alternative qubit modalities and architectural approaches that their proponents argue will prove more scalable than superconducting qubits in the long run. The diversity of approaches in the quantum computing field reflects the genuine scientific uncertainty about which physical implementation of qubits will ultimately prove most scalable, most error-correctable and most economically manufacturable at the scales needed for truly significant quantum computation.

Timeline to Practical Quantum Advantage

The question that attracts most interest from potential commercial users of quantum computing – when will quantum computers be able to solve practical problems of commercial value better than classical computers? – remains difficult to answer with precision, but the trajectory of results like Friday’s announcement is providing the evidence base for more informed estimates than were possible even two years ago. The consensus among quantum computing researchers is that ‘broad quantum advantage’ – the ability to solve a wide range of commercially relevant problems better than classical computers – is still several years away at minimum, with most estimates ranging from three to eight years depending on assumptions about the rate of qubit quality improvement and the development of quantum error correction systems.

Narrower quantum advantage – meaningful speedups in specific, well-defined problem domains including quantum chemistry, certain optimisation problems and machine learning applications – may be achievable on the current generation of hardware for specific use cases, and IBM’s research partnerships with pharmaceutical companies, materials science organisations and financial institutions are specifically designed to identify and validate those use cases as the technology matures. For the companies and research organisations following quantum computing development, Friday’s 1,000-qubit milestone is an inflection point rather than an arrival: evidence that the technology is advancing along a credible trajectory toward practical utility, not yet a declaration that that utility has been achieved at commercial scale. But milestones matter in long development programmes, and this one has been a long time coming for everyone working in the field.

Implications for Cryptography

One area that has attracted particular attention in the context of IBM’s milestone is cryptography. The encryption systems that secure internet communications, financial transactions and sensitive government data worldwide – including the RSA and elliptic curve cryptography systems used in virtually all current secure communications – are mathematically vulnerable to a sufficiently powerful quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm. Current quantum computers are nowhere near the scale required to break these encryption systems: the number of high-quality qubits needed to threaten RSA-2048 encryption is estimated at approximately 4,000 logical qubits, which in turn would require millions of physical qubits given current error rates. The Condor-2’s 1,121 high-quality qubits are genuinely impressive but not close to the cryptographic threat threshold. The cybersecurity community is nonetheless actively developing and deploying post-quantum cryptographic standards as a precautionary measure, with NIST having finalised several post-quantum cryptographic algorithms in 2024 that organisations are encouraged to begin implementing. The IBM milestone adds urgency to that transition without representing an immediate cryptographic emergency.