IBM, AMD, and Oak Ridge launch quantum error-correction platform

The platform co-locates IBM’s quantum computers — including its most powerful processor, the 120-qubit Nighthawk — with Oak Ridge’s Umbra high-performance computing system, which runs on AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs and fifth-generation AMD EPYC CPUs. The AMD hardware supplies the classical computing underneath research into quantum error correction, decoding optimization, and software orchestration, letting researchers directly compare what different error-correction methods cost in qubits, time, samples, and classical compute.

The work aligns with the DOE’s Quantum Genesis Mission, which — through its Q Competition — is targeting 100 logical qubits running 100,000 “hard operations” by late 2028 as a step toward a scientifically relevant quantum computer. IBM’s current progress sits at up to 70 logical qubits and 438 hard operations, tracked on the Quantum Advantage Tracker, meaning the field needs roughly a 230-fold increase in hard-operation count to hit the 2028 goal. “Solving the challenges of quantum error correction is essential to making quantum computing a practical tool for scientific discovery, which is a priority for Oak Ridge National Laboratory,” said Travis Humble, director of the Quantum Science Center, adding that Umbra lets the partners “test new ideas, evaluate approaches at scale, and build the foundation for more reliable quantum computers.”

IBM Research director Jay Gambetta said the remaining question is no longer whether error correction works on quantum hardware but how to accelerate and optimize it enough to build systems scientists can actually use, while AMD’s Mark Papermaster framed the platform as a step toward the scalable, efficient computing infrastructure that fault-tolerant quantum computing will need. The effort builds on existing IBM-ORNL work through the Quantum Science Center and a separate IBM-AMD collaboration using AMD GPUs to accelerate quantum-centric supercomputing workflows, and the partners say what they learn here could inform IBM’s planned fault-tolerant system, Quantum Starling, as well as future supercomputers that combine AMD hardware with quantum processors.

Why it matters

By making the gap to a usable quantum computer explicit — a roughly 230-fold jump in error-corrected operations needed by 2028 — this platform turns quantum error correction from a research curiosity into a benchmarked race with a public scoreboard and a deadline.