Surface Code Breakthrough Paves Way for Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing
Quantum Elements and the University of Southern California (USC) have made a significant breakthrough in quantum computing, demonstrating that surface-code error correction can be adapted to superconducting processors with non-square physical layouts.
The researchers combined a depth-efficient surface code with dynamical decoupling techniques to reduce idle-time noise on IBM Heron processors' heavy-hex architecture. This allowed them to achieve below-threshold performance as the code distance increased.
According to Professor Daniel Lidar, Chief Scientific Officer and Director of the USC Center for Quantum Information Science & Technology, 'Because a given error correcting code and hardware may not always match, we wanted to test the limits of making the surface code work on IBM's heavy-hex hardware.'