On November 5, 2026, IBM, AMD and the U.S. Department of Energy-funded Quantum Science Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) launched a research platform to study quantum error correction. Its first deployment pairs IBM quantum computers, including a 120-qubit IBM Quantum Nighthawk, with ORNL’s Umbra high-performance computing system, according to ORNL’s announcement.
How the platform joins quantum and classical computing
The initial setup brings IBM’s quantum computers together with ORNL’s Umbra system, which uses AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs and 5th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs. Researchers will use the combined environment to investigate error correction, decoder optimization and software orchestration, the coordination of software across the systems.
What researchers can control and investigate
The IBM Quantum System API gives researchers pulse-level access to the quantum hardware, measurements during a calculation and responses to those measurements. It also provides control over signal timing, visibility into hardware execution and access to raw measurement signals.
The planned research includes concatenated and space-time error-correction codes, algorithm-aware decoders, hardware-aware circuit optimization and compilation. These approaches let researchers examine how error-correction methods and the systems that run them work together.
ORNL also describes a pathway to connect the platform with the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, extending the research environment toward broader scientific computing.
Processor qubits and logical qubits measure different things
IBM Quantum Nighthawk’s 120-qubit count describes the processor. A logical qubit is an error-corrected unit, and its count measures a different stage of quantum-computing research. The processor’s 120 qubits therefore cannot be read as 120 logical qubits.
Keep processor-qubit counts separate from logical-qubit benchmarks: they describe different measures of the hardware and its error-correction progress.
The DOE benchmark and IBM progress cited by ORNL
The DOE’s Q Competition sets a target for late 2028: 100 logical qubits running 100,000 hard operations. ORNL cites IBM experiments reaching up to 70 logical qubits and 438 hard operations. The experiment figures and the competition target are separate benchmarks.
| Measure | IBM experimental progress cited by ORNL | DOE Q Competition target |
| Logical qubits | Up to 70 | 100 by late 2028 |
| Hard operations | 438 | 100,000 by late 2028 |
ORNL describes the gap between 438 and 100,000 hard operations as roughly 230-fold. The ratio of the target to the cited experimental figure is about 228 to 1. The announced platform’s research is intended to support the broader effort, which ORNL links to the DOE’s Quantum Genesis Mission.
The platform builds on earlier IBM–AMD decoding work
ORNL says the new platform builds on a separate IBM–AMD demonstration from the prior year, in which an algorithm decoded quantum errors on AMD chips. That earlier work is distinct from the research now planned for the co-design platform.
