Q-CTRL reports a 3,000x speedup over classical tools on a 120-qubit materials simulation on IBM hardware

Q-CTRL/Fire Opal

Q-CTRL used its error-suppression software on an IBM quantum computer to simulate interacting electrons in a material (a Fermi–Hubbard model), finishing in about two minutes; the best classical tool it tested needed over 3,000 times longer. Q-CTRL calls it evidence of practical quantum advantage, while noting that better classical algorithms or faster GPUs could narrow the gap.

• Circuit: 120 qubits and over 10,000 two-qubit gates.
• Classical comparison: the Flatiron Institute's TDVP tensor-network code, over 100 hours.
• The configuration is to reach Fire Opal users as a Simulation Solver and a Qiskit Function.
• Technical details: arXiv 2605.04025.