NEW YORK / SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 24 (Reuters) – IBM said on Friday it is able to run a key quantum-computing error-correction algorithm on widely available chips from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), in what the company describes as a major milestone toward making quantum computing more commercially viable.

Quantum computers make use of what are called qubits to tackle problems that would otherwise take conventional computers thousands of years—for example modelling interactions among trillions of atoms. But qubits are highly error-prone: even small disturbances in the environment can cause the system to fail or produce incorrect results.

In June, IBM announced it had developed an algorithm to detect and correct those errors while a quantum chip is in operation. Now, the forthcoming research paper—expected Monday—will show that the algorithm can run in real time on a type of chip called a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) manufactured by AMD.

According to IBM’s Director of Research Jay Gambetta, the demonstration proves not only that the algorithm works in principle, but also that it operates on hardware that is “not ridiculously expensive” and widely available. He added:

“Implementing it, and showing that the implementation is actually 10 times faster than what is needed, is a big deal.”

IBM is aiming to build a large-scale quantum system named “Starling” by 2029, and Gambetta said this algorithm work was completed “a year ahead of schedule”.

Why it matters:

• Running the error‐correction algorithm on conventional hardware represents a potential path to scaling quantum-systems more cost-effectively, as opposed to relying solely on highly specialised, bespoke quantum control infrastructure.
• It signals progress in one of the major bottlenecks for quantum computing: maintaining coherence and correctness of increasingly large qubit arrays, which otherwise suffer from error accumulation and quickly lose advantage over classical machines.
• The cost and accessibility angle matter: by using AMD FPGAs (already common in data-centres and high‐performance computing contexts), the team lowers the barrier for more widely deploying error-correction layers.

What next:
IBM will publish its research paper shortly, detailing the implementation, performance metrics, and implications for future quantum system architectures.

Meanwhile, the broader quantum ecosystem—including companies such as Microsoft, Google (Alphabet) and other quantum-hardware startups—is racing to solve similar challenges around scalability, error-correction and practical deployment.