Have quantum computers really reached 1,000 qubits - and what does that actually mean?

The answer

In December 2023, IBM unveiled Condor, the first quantum processor to exceed 1,000 qubits (1,121 qubits), a milestone in raw qubit count. However, the quantum computing community quickly learned that qubit quantity alone doesn't determine usefulness - error rates matter more. IBM simultaneously released Heron, a 133-qubit chip with dramatically lower error rates that actually outperforms Condor on practical tasks. Then in December 2024, Google's Willow chip (105 qubits) achieved a breakthrough: for the first time, adding more qubits reduced rather than increased errors, solving the critical 30-year-old quantum error correction challenge. Willow performed a benchmark computation in under 5 minutes that would take the world's fastest classical supercomputer 10 septillion years. Despite these advances, practical quantum advantage for real-world business problems remains elusive - current quantum computers excel mainly at specific benchmarks rather than general-purpose computation. Error correction still requires many physical qubits per logical qubit, meaning a useful fault-tolerant quantum computer may need millions of physical qubits.