IBM Delivers New Quantum Package
9 comments
·November 13, 2025jimmar
Y_Y
The trouble with quantum supremacy results is they disappear as soon as you observe them (carefully).
Sorry for that, but seriously, I'd treat this kind of claim like any other putative breakthrough (room-temperature superconductors spring to mind), until it's independently verified it's worthless. The punishment for crying wolf is minimal and by the time you're shown to be bullshitting the headlines have moved on.
The other method, of course, is to just obsessively check Scott Aaronson's blog.
StableAlkyne
There's legitimately interesting research in using it to accelerate certain calculations. For example, usually you see a few talks at chemistry conferences on how it's gotten marginally faster at (very basic) electronic structure calculations. Also some neat stuff in the optimization space. Stuff you keep your eye on hoping it's useful in 10 years.
The most similar comparison is AI stuff, except even that has found some practical applications. Unlike AI, there isn't really much practicality for quantum computers right now beyond bumping up your h-index
Well, maybe there is one. As a joke with some friends after a particularly bad string of natural 1's in D&D, I used IBM's free tier (IIRC it's 10 minutes per month) and wrote a dice roller to achieve maximum randomness.
NickC25
that was my understanding too - in the fields of chemistry, materials science, pharmaceutical development, etc... quantum tech is somewhat promising and might be pretty viable in those specific niche fields within the decade.
boilerupnc
Related Qiskit Tutorial Video[0] "This tutorial covers advanced techniques for implementing the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) at the utility scale using Qiskit. In this video, we walk through how to build, optimize, and run QAOA for real world optimization problems on real IBM Quantum hardware. This series is designed for quantum computing practitioners who are ready to move beyond basic examples and start running large scale, hardware aware algorithms. We explore how to transition from theory to practical execution, covering algorithm development, circuit optimization, hybrid workflows, and best practices for hardware performance. Whether you are expanding your QAOA skills or preparing to run your own research experiments, this tutorial will help you strengthen your understanding of utility scale quantum computing with Qiskit."
pm90
I've been bit by the mass marketing nonsense of "Watson" but IBM Research does some pretty good work, and their progress on Quantum Computing seems to be "real"; and certainly more reliable than Microsoft (shocked!).
knowitnone3
"Qiskit capabilities show 24 percent increase in accuracy" what was it before? What good is a computer that is not 100% accurate? Do I have to run a function 1000x to get some average 99% chance the output is correct?
mushufasa
One of my colleagues read a paper about quantum computing techniques to solve complex optimization problems (the domain of complex mixed integer solvers) and tried it out for a financial portfolio optimization, replicating the examples provided by one of the quantum computing companies during a trial period.
The computer *did not* produce the same results each time, and often the results were wrong. The service provider's support staff didn't help -- their response was effectively "oh shucks."
We discontinued considering quantum computing after that. Not suitable for our use-case.
Maybe quantum computing would be applicable if you were trying to crack encryption, wherein getting the right result once is helpful regardless of how many wrong answers you get in the process.
a_vanderbilt
Essentially correct. With a quantum computer you do multiple runs and average the result.
> IBM anticipates that the first cases of verified quantum advantage will be confirmed by the wider community by the end of 2026.
In 2019, Google claimed quantum supremacy [1]. I'm truly confused about what quantum computing can do today, or what it's likely to be able to do in the next decade.
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/technology/computing/google-and-nasa-ac...