Q-CTRL Leads in Quantum Error Management on IBM Heron Hardware

An independent benchmarking study published on arXiv (arXiv:2608.05202) evaluates commercial quantum error suppression and error mitigation software stacks on a 156-qubit IBM Heron r3 superconducting processor.

The study compares native IBM Qiskit Runtime primitives against third-party managed pipelines in the Qiskit Functions Catalog, specifically Q-CTRL Performance Management and Qedma QESEM. All experiments were executed on ibm_pittsburgh, a 156-qubit IBM Quantum Heron r3 superconducting processor.

The benchmark evaluates two execution models: sampling tasks (bitstring counts) via Sampler interfaces, and observable expectation values via Estimator interfaces. In the Sampler Track, Q-CTRL's autonomous suppression pipeline delivered the highest exact-output success probabilities across all 12 test cases.