IBM Quantum Processor Smashes Supercomputing Record with 1 Million Measurements in 19 Seconds
A research team led by Tigran Sedrakyan at US-based BlueQubit has made a significant breakthrough in quantum computing. They reported obtaining 1 million measurement results from a specific quantum circuit using IBM's 'Nighthawk r2' processor, which they claim would take a supercomputer 110 years to accomplish.
The team used a standard execution environment available through a commercial cloud service and selected 61 qubits along with 102 connections linking them for the experiment. The task was random circuit sampling, where random operations are repeatedly applied to the qubits, after which all qubits are measured.
However, generating samples that reflect the inherent distribution of a quantum circuit is extremely difficult for classical computers. To verify quality, the team used two methods: patch XEB and mirror benchmarking. The first method involves dividing the circuit into smaller pieces and comparing ideal values against actual results from the hardware. The second method observes how close the system gets back to its original state after running a quantum circuit forward and then reversing operations.
The researchers found that their 1 million measurement results were of high quality, with fidelity values closely matching those obtained using both methods. However, it's essential to note that these findings have not yet undergone peer review, as they are summarized in a preprint paper published on September 23, 2026.