Quantum Volume reaches 5 digits for the first time: 5 perspectives on what it means for quantum computing

Quantum Volume reaches 5 digits for the first time

5 perspectives on what it means for quantum computing

February 23, 2023

ҹɫֱ��’s H-Series team has hit the ground running in 2023, achieving a new performance milestone. The H1-1 trapped ion quantum computer has achieved a Quantum Volume (QV) of 32,768 (2¹⁵), the highest in the industry to date.

The team previously increased the QV to 8,192 (or 2¹³) for the System Model H1 system in September, less than six months ago. The next goal was a QV of 16,384 (2¹⁴). However, continuous improvements to the H1-1's controls and subsystems advanced the system enough to successfully reach 2¹⁴ as expected, and then to go one major step further, and reach a QV of 2¹⁵.

The Quantum Volume test is a full-system benchmark that produces a single-number measure of a quantum computer’s general capability. The benchmark takes into account qubit number, fidelity, connectivity, and other quantities important in building useful devices. While other measures such as gate fidelity and qubit count are significant and worth tracking, neither is as comprehensive as Quantum Volume which better represents the operational ability of a quantum computer.

Dr. Brian Neyenhuis, Director of Commercial Operations, credits reductions in the phase noise of the computer’s lasers as one key factor in the increase.

"We've had enough qubits for a while, but we've been continually pushing on reducing the error in our quantum operations, specifically the two-qubit gate error, to allow us to do these Quantum Volume measurements,” he said.

The ҹɫֱ�� team improved memory error and elements of the calibration process as well.

“It was a lot of little things that got us to the point where our two-qubit gate error and our memory error are both low enough that we can pass these Quantum Volume circuit tests,” he said.

The work of increasing Quantum Volume means improving all the subsystems and subcomponents of the machine individually and simultaneously, while ensuring all the systems continue to work well together. Such a complex task takes a high degree of orchestration across the ҹɫֱ�� team, with the benefits of the work passed on to H-Series users.

To illustrate what this 5-digit Quantum Volume milestone means for the H-Series, here are 5 perspectives that reflect ҹɫֱ�� teams and H-Series users.

Perspective #1: How a higher QV impacts algorithms

Dr. Henrik Dreyer is Managing Director and Scientific Lead at ҹɫֱ��’s office in Munich, Germany. In the context of his work, an improvement in Quantum Volume is important as it relates to gate fidelity.

“As application developers, the signal-to-noise ratio is what we're interested in,” Henrik said. “If the signal is small, I might run the circuits 10 times and only get one good shot. To recover the signal, I have to do a lot more shots and throw most of them away. Every shot takes time."

“The signal-to-noise ratio is sensitive to the gate fidelity. If you increase the gate fidelity by a little bit, the runtime of a given algorithm may go down drastically,” he said. “For a typical circuit, as the plot shows, even a relatively modest 0.16 percentage point improvement in fidelity, could mean that it runs in less than half the time.”

To demonstrate this point, the ҹɫֱ�� team has been benchmarking the System Model H1 performance on circuits relevant for near-term applications. The graph below shows repeated benchmarking of the runtime of these circuits before and after the recent improvement in gate fidelity. The result of this moderate change in fidelity is a 3x change in runtime. The runtimes calculated below are based on the number of shots required to obtain accurate results from the benchmarking circuit – the example uses 430 arbitrary-angle two-qubit gates and an accuracy of 3%.

Perspective #2: Advancing quantum error correction

Dr. Natalie Brown and Dr, Ciaran Ryan-Anderson both work on quantum error correction at ҹɫֱ��. They see the QV advance as an overall boost to this work.

“Hitting a Quantum Volume number like this means that you have low error rates, a lot of qubits, and very long circuits,” Natalie said. “And all three of those are wonderful things for quantum error correction. A higher Quantum Volume most certainly means we will be able to run quantum error correction better. Error correction is a critical ingredient to large-scale quantum computing. The earlier we can start exploring error correction on today’s small-scale hardware, the faster we’ll be able to demonstrate it at large-scale.”

Ciaran said that H1-1's low error rates allow scientists to make error correction better and start to explore decoding options.

“If you can have really low error rates, you can apply a lot of quantum operations, known as gates,” Ciaran said. "This makes quantum error correction easier because we can suppress the noise even further and potentially use fewer resources to do it, compared to other devices.”

Perspective #3: Meeting a high benchmark

“This accomplishment shows that gate improvements are getting translated to full-system circuits,” said Dr. Charlie Baldwin, a research scientist at ҹɫֱ��.

Charlie specializes in quantum computing performance benchmarks, conducting research with the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C).

“Other benchmarking tests use easier circuits or incorporate other options like post-processing data. This can make it more difficult to determine what part improved,” he said. “With Quantum Volume, it’s clear that the performance improvements are from the hardware, which are the hardest and most significant improvements to make.”

“Quantum Volume is a well-established test. You really can’t cheat it,” said Charlie.

Perspective #4: Implications for quantum applications

Dr. Ross Duncan, Head of Quantum Software, sees Quantum Volume measurements as a good way to show overall progress in the process of building a quantum computer.

“Quantum Volume has merit, compared to any other measure, because it gives a clear answer,” he said.

“This latest increase reveals the extent of combined improvements in the hardware in recent months and means researchers and developers can expect to run deeper circuits with greater success.”

Perspective #5: H-Series users

ҹɫֱ��’s business model is unique in that the H-Series systems are continuously upgraded through their product lifecycle. For users, this means they continually and immediately get access to the latest breakthroughs in performance. The reported improvements were not done on an internal testbed, but rather implemented on the H1-1 system which is commercially available and used extensively by users around the world.

“As soon as the improvements were implemented, users were benefiting from them,” said Dr. Jenni Strabley, Sr. Director of Offering Management. “We take our Quantum Volume measurement intermixed with customers’ jobs, so we know that the improvements we’re seeing are also being seen by our customers.”

Jenni went on to say, “Continuously delivering increasingly better performance shows our commitment to our customers’ success with these early small-scale quantum computers as well as our commitment to accuracy and transparency. That’s how we accelerate quantum computing.”

Supporting data from ҹɫֱ��’s 2¹⁵ QV milestone

This latest QV milestone demonstrates how the ҹɫֱ�� team continues to boost the performance of the System Model H1, making improvements to the two-qubit gate fidelity while maintaining high single-qubit fidelity, high SPAM fidelity, and low cross-talk.

The average single-qubit gate fidelity for these milestones was 99.9955(8)%, the average two-qubit gate fidelity was 99.795(7)% with fully connected qubits, and state preparation and measurement fidelity was 99.69(4)%.

For both tests, the ҹɫֱ�� team ran 100 circuits with 200 shots each, using standard QV optimization techniques to yield an average of 219.02 arbitrary angle two-qubit gates per circuit on the 2¹⁴test, and 244.26 arbitrary angle two-qubit gates per circuit on the 2¹⁵test.

The ҹɫֱ�� H1-1 successfully passed the quantum volume 16,384 benchmark, outputting heavy outcomes 69.88% of the time, and passed the 32,768 benchmark, outputting heavy outcomes 69.075% of the time. The heavy output frequency is a simple measure of how well the measured outputs from the quantum computer match the results from an ideal simulation. Both results are above the two-thirds passing threshold with high confidence. More details on the Quantum Volume test can be found .

Heavy output frequency for H1-1 at 2¹⁵ (QV 32,768)

Chart, scatter chartDescription automatically generated

Heavy output frequency for H1-1 at 2¹⁴ (QV 16,384)

Quantum Volume data and analysis code can be accessed on . Contemporary benchmarking data can be accessed at .

About ҹɫֱ��

ҹɫֱ��, the world’s largest integrated quantum company, pioneers powerful quantum computers and advanced software solutions. ҹɫֱ��’s technology drives breakthroughs in materials discovery, cybersecurity, and next-gen quantum AI. With over 500 employees, including 370+ scientists and engineers, ҹɫֱ�� leads the quantum computing revolution across continents.

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June 26, 2025

ҹɫֱ�� Overcomes Last Major Hurdle to Deliver Scalable Universal Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computers by 2029

Quantum computing companies are poised to exceed $1 billion in revenues by the close of 2025, to McKinsey & Company, underscoring how today’s quantum computers are already delivering customer value in their current phase of development.

This figure is projected to reach upwards of $37 billion by 2030, rising in parallel with escalating demand, as well as with the scale of the machines and the complexity of problem sets of which they will be able to address.

Several systems on the market today are fault-tolerant by design, meaning they are capable of suppressing error-causing noise to yield reliable calculations. However, the full potential of quantum computing to tackle problems of true industrial relevance, in areas like medicine, energy, and finance, remains contingent on an architecture that supports a fully fault-tolerant universal gate set with repeatable error correction—a capability that, until now, has eluded the industry.

ҹɫֱ�� is the first—and only—company to achieve this critical technical breakthrough, universally recognized as the essential precursor to scalable, industrial-scale quantum computing. This milestone provides us with the most de-risked development roadmap in the industry and positions us to fulfill our promise to deliver our universal, fully fault-tolerant quantum computer, Apollo, by 2029.

In this regard, ҹɫֱ�� is the first company to step from the so-called “NISQ” (noisy intermediate-scale quantum) era towards utility-scale quantum computers.

Unpacking our achievement: first, a ‘full’ primer

A quantum computer uses operations called gates to process information in ways that even today’s fastest supercomputers cannot. The industry typically refers to two types of gates for quantum computers:

Clifford gates, which can be easily simulated by classical computers, and are relatively easy to implement; and
Non-Clifford gates, which are usually harder to implement, but are required to enable true quantum computation (when combined with their siblings).

A system that can run both gates is classified as and has the machinery to tackle the widest range of problems. Without non-Clifford gates, a quantum computer is non-universal and restricted to smaller, easier sets of tasks - and it can always be simulated by classical computers. This is like painting with a full palette of primary colors, versus only having one or two to work with. Simply put, a quantum computer that cannot implement ‘non-Clifford’ gates is not really a quantum computer.

A fault-tolerant, or error-corrected, quantum computer detects and corrects its own errors (or faults) to produce reliable results. ҹɫֱ�� has the best and brightest scientists dedicated to keeping our systems’ error rates the lowest in the world.

For a quantum computer to be fully fault-tolerant, every operation must be error-resilient, across Clifford gates and non-Clifford gates, and thus, performing “a full gate set” with error correction. While some groups have performed fully fault-tolerant gate sets in academic settings, these demonstrations were done with only a few qubits and —too high for any practical use.

Today, we have published that establishes ҹɫֱ�� as the first company to develop a complete solution for a universal fully fault-tolerant quantum computer with repeatable error correction, and error rates low enough for real-world applications.

This is where the magic happens

The describes how scientists at ҹɫֱ�� used our System Model H1-1 to perfect magic state production, a crucial technique for achieving a fully fault-tolerant universal gate set. In doing so, they set a record magic state infidelity (7x10^-5), 10x better than any .

Our simulations show that our system could reach a magic state infidelity of 10^-10, or about one error per 10 billion operations, on a larger-scale computer with our current physical error rate. We anticipate reaching 10^-14, or about one error per 100 trillion operations, as we continue to advance our hardware. This means that our roadmap is now derisked.

Setting a record magic state infidelity was just the beginning. The paper also presents the first break-even two-qubit non-Clifford gate, demonstrating a logical error rate below the physical one. In doing so, the team set another record for two-qubit non-Clifford gate infidelity (2x10^-4, almost 10x better than our physical error rate). Putting everything together, the team ran the first circuit that used a fully fault-tolerant universal gate set, a critical moment for our industry.

Flipping the switch

In the , co-authored with researchers at the University of California at Davis, we demonstrated an important technique for universal fault-tolerance called “code switching”.

Code switching describes switching between different error correcting codes. The team then used the technique to demonstrate the key ingredients for universal computation, this time using a code where we’ve previously demonstrated full error correction and the other ingredients for universality.

In the process, the team set a new record for magic states in a distance-3 error correcting code, over 10x better than with error correction. Notably, this process only cost 28 qubits . This completes, for the first time, the ingredient list for a universal gate setin a system that also has real-time and repeatable QEC.

To perform "code switching", one can implement a logical gate between a 2D code and a 3D code, as pictured above. This type of advanced error correcting process requires ҹɫֱ��'s reconfigurable connectivity.

Fully equipped for fault-tolerance

Innovations like those described in these two papers can reduce estimates for qubit requirements by an order of magnitude, or more, bringing powerful quantum applications within reach far sooner.

With all of the required pieces now, finally, in place, we are ‘fully’ equipped to become the first company to perform universal fully fault-tolerant computing—just in time for the arrival of Helios, our next generation system launching this year, and what is very likely to remain as the most powerful quantum computer on the market until the launch of its successor, Sol, arriving in 2027.

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June 10, 2025

Our Hardware is Now Running Quantum Transformers!

If we are to create ‘next-gen’ AI that takes full advantage of the power of quantum computers, we need to start with quantum native transformers. Today we announce yet again that ҹɫֱ�� continues to lead by demonstrating concrete progress — advancing from theoretical models to real quantum deployment.

The future of AI won't be built on yesterday’s tech. If we're serious about creating next-generation AI that unlocks the full promise of quantum computing, then we must build quantum-native models—designed for quantum, from the ground up.

Around this time last year, we introduced Quixer, a state-of-the-art quantum-native transformer. Today, we’re thrilled to announce a major milestone: one year on, Quixer is now running natively on quantum hardware.

Why this matters: Quantum AI, born native

This marks a turning point for the industry: realizing quantum-native AI opens a world of possibilities.

Classical transformers revolutionized AI. They power everything from ChatGPT to real-time translation, computer vision, drug discovery, and algorithmic trading. Now, Quixer sets the stage for a similar leap — but for quantum-native computation. Because quantum computers differ fundamentally from classical computers, we expect a whole new host of valuable applications to emerge.

Achieving that future requires models that are efficient, scalable, and actually run on today’s quantum hardware.

That’s what we’ve built.

What makes Quixer different?

Until Quixer, quantum transformers were the result of a brute force “copy-paste” approach: taking the math from a classical model and putting it onto a quantum circuit. However, this approach does not account for the considerable differences between quantum and classical architectures, leading to substantial resource requirements.

Quixer is different: it’s not a translation – it's an innovation.

With Quixer, our team introduced an explicitly quantum transformer, built from the ground up using quantum algorithmic primitives. Because Quixer is tailored for quantum circuits, it's more resource efficient than most competing approaches.

As quantum computing advances toward fault tolerance, Quixer is built to scale with it.

What’s next for Quixer?

We’ve already deployed Quixer on real-world data: genomic sequence analysis, a high-impact classification task in biotech. We're happy to report that its performance is already approaching that of classical models, even in this first implementation.

This is just the beginning.

Looking ahead, we’ll explore using Quixer anywhere classical transformers have proven to be useful; such as language modeling, image classification, quantum chemistry, and beyond. More excitingly, we expect use cases to emerge that are quantum-specific, impossible on classical hardware.

This milestone isn’t just about one model. It’s a signal that the quantum AI era has begun, and that ҹɫֱ�� is leading the charge with real results, not empty hype.

Stay tuned. The revolution is only getting started.

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June 9, 2025

Join us at ISC25

Our team is participating in (ISC 2025) from June 10-13 in Hamburg, Germany!

As quantum computing accelerates, so does the urgency to integrate its capabilities into today’s high-performance computing (HPC) and AI environments. At ISC 2025, meet the ҹɫֱ�� team to learn how the highest performing quantum systems on the market, combined with advanced software and powerful collaborations, are helping organizations take the next step in their compute strategy.

ҹɫֱ�� is leading the industry across every major vector: performance, hybrid integration, scientific innovation, global collaboration and ease of access.

Our industry-leading quantum computer holds the record for performance with a Quantum Volume of 2²³ = 8,388,608 and the highest fidelity on a commercially available QPU available to our users every time they access our systems.
Our systems have been validated by a #1 ranking against competitors in a recent benchmarking study by Jülich Research Centre.
We’ve laid out a clear roadmap to reach universal, fully fault-tolerant quantum computing by the end of the decade and will launch our next-generation system, Helios, later this year.
We are advancing real-world hybrid compute with partners such as RIKEN, NVIDIA, SoftBank, STFC Hartree Center and are pioneering applications such as our own GenQAI framework.

Exhibit Hall

From June 10–13, in Hamburg, Germany, visit us at Booth B40 in the Exhibition Hall or attend one of our technical talks to explore how our quantum technologies are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible across HPC.

Presentations & Demos

Throughout ISC, our team will present on the most important topics in HPC and quantum computing integration—from near-term hybrid use cases to hardware innovations and future roadmaps.

Multicore World Networking Event

‍Monday, June 9 | 7:00pm – 9:00 PM at Hofbräu Wirtshaus Esplanade
‍In partnership with Multicore World, join us for a ҹɫֱ��-sponsored Happy Hour to explore the present and future of quantum computing with ҹɫֱ�� CCO, Dr. Nash Palaniswamy, and network with our team.

H1 x CUDA-Q Demonstration

‍All Week at Booth B40
‍We’re showcasing a live demonstration of NVIDIA’s CUDA-Q platform running on ҹɫֱ��’s industry-leading quantum hardware. This new integration paves the way for hybrid compute solutions in optimization, AI, and chemistry.
‍Register for a demo

HPC Solutions Forum

‍Wednesday, June 11 | 2:20 – 2:40 PM
‍“Enabling Scientific Discovery with Generative Quantum AI” – Presented by Maud Einhorn, Technical Account Executive at ҹɫֱ��, discover how hybrid quantum-classical workflows are powering novel use cases in scientific discovery.

See You There!

Whether you're exploring hybrid solutions today or planning for large-scale quantum deployment tomorrow, ISC 2025 is the place to begin the conversation.

We look forward to seeing you in Hamburg!

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