Please, it is still a research project, it's not like a regular computer just faster, it is novel research.
Regarding the quantum side, I would love to know if by programmable qubit are they referring to an error corrected qubit or just one where gates can be applied.
I suspect it means error corrected qubits. I was wondering if there was work being done on algorithms that are noise resistant and as such can take advantage of the raw qubit count instead of the error corrected qubit count.
I would love to work in this area but I think it's all research at the moment. It's really interesting, how it actually works, not just the hand wavy abstractions.
Although note, the above is if you are referring to error correction in the traditional sense of error correcting codes. According to Ars Technica's article [1], the non-programmable qubits are being used for leakage removal: coupling to the computational/programmable qubits and stabilizing them, but not being used for any computation themselves. This is far from error correcting codes in the mathematical sense, but it does have a similar purpose of reducing noise.
For what you are wondering about in your penultimate sentence is possible for any algorithms, I am not sure, but it's a very good question. However, I know that for general algorithms, there is a range of error reduction techniques you can use short of full QEC, IBM has a decent blog post about them [2]. Usually, the trade-off is error reduction vs increased number of shots and post-processing (so vs time, not space).
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/11/ibm-to-offer-access-...
I however no knowledge of the subject other than that you can turn a binary bit in to a 2.
But it's all a scam since these machines can do nothing useful, except allowing you to try out programming simple quantum algorithms.
BTW they keep obfuscating the difference between logical and physical qubits. Logical qubits is what it's all about but this article sort of uses them interchangeably. Most of the time they're talking about physical qubits, though.
Someone once calculated that you'd need a million physical qubits to crack RSA-4096. That shows you how much farther we have to go for these machines to be useful.
Very cool technology though.
[1] https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/goldeneye-cryogenic-concept...
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/11/ibm-to-offer-access-...
IBM has an advantage tracker that needs more submissions https://quantum-advantage-tracker.github.io/
The problem is that the US approach to funding research has backed itself into a corner. Every research advance in a technologically relevant industry has to be presented as though a commercial product is just around the corner, because no-one will pay for the research otherwise.
Eventually, though, the market will get tired of the endless unfulfilled projections and you'll get a "quantum winter".
between 2021-2024 technical progress was not impressive, and companies failed to build what they were trying to at the pace they wanted to. Since the end of 2024 this is no longer the case and progress is constant. To me it seems increasingly likely that by 2030 we'll have fault tolerant compute across multiple modalities including IBM's superconductors.
Every single discussion thread about any announcement in quantum feels exactly the same:
1. this is not what you think it is, there are caveats and the title is misleading.
2. I feel there is so much hype around quantum computing.
3. It's like nuclear fusion, always 10 years away.
4. Nuclear fusion is at least practical. QC is not.
5. Did they manage to find prime factorization of 17 already? LOL
6. Cryptography will be dead, RIP bitcoin and https.
7. No, actually quantum computers are useless.
It's tiring. I recommend this recent post by Scott Aaronson https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9668