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An open-weight model running on IBM's GPUs found a 52-fold faster design for about $26 in inference. The speedups are synthesis-tool estimates for an FPGA decoder, from a single run of each configuration.
Riverlane, NVIDIA, and several control-electronics makers now sell parts of the loop that turns error checks into corrections. Among the superconducting tests surveyed, loops using Riverlane's decoder have met a 10-microsecond budget, in small configurations only.
IonQ researchers ran a real-time decoder on 12 cores of an Apple M4 Max and measured decoding delays that lengthened simulated run times by 0.02% to 11.53%. They generated all error-check data in a noise simulation, without quantum hardware.
Xanadu researchers timed round trips of 16-byte messages between an AMD FPGA board and an AMD Threadripper CPU at a median 2.305 microseconds, first as a plain echo and then with a small lookup-table decoder. No quantum processor was attached.
Qblox and Riverlane timed the full round trip from error check to correction on commercial hardware at 6.886 to 11.886 microseconds. They emulated the qubit signals and connected no quantum processor.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation says the Copenhagen plant will offer wafer fabrication to quantum vendors worldwide on commercial terms. The partners named no customers, qubit type, production volume, or cost.
Error-correction, key-distribution, and algorithmic decoders are three of several jobs that share one name. Only the first runs against a machine's clock, where its speed and accuracy affect the clock rate and qubit cost of fault-tolerant designs.
IBM's two joined cryogenic cells reached 4 kelvin in under five days with no processors inside. News outlets reported a temperature under simulated load and a chip-link fidelity figure that IBM did not include in its release or technical blog.
Buyers already pair control electronics and refrigerators from different suppliers and use open compiler formats. Calibration has a published specification only for pulse jobs. Module links have none. In those two layers, buyers still depend on one vendor.
A quantum computer runs on clocks from nanoseconds to hours. IBM and Xanadu both drew their software layers along those clocks. A buyer still cannot swap one vendor's processor, controller or decoder for another's by recompiling.
