A 98-qubit trapped-ion computer adds qubits without losing accuracy
A team reported in Nature on June 17 a trapped-ion quantum computer called Helios that operates 98 qubits with all-to-all connectivity — meaning any two qubits in the system can be made to interact directly, rather than only with their neighbors. That flexibility lets a wider range of quantum algorithms run without the overhead of shuffling information across the chip.
The significance is less the qubit count than what accompanies it. Scaling the number of qubits usually degrades their reliability, and the value of a machine depends on accuracy as much as size — a large set of error-prone qubits is of little practical use. The reported system maintains accuracy as it grows, addressing the trade-off that has limited quantum hardware to date. The work was accompanied by a peer-reviewed research paper in the same issue.