Quantum Showdown: Superconducting vs Trapped Ion vs Photonic – Who Will Rule Quantum Computing?
IBM unveiled Condor in 2023 as the first quantum processor with 1,121 superconducting qubits, with a roadmap to over 4,000 qubits by 2025. Google released the Willow superconducting chip with 105 qubits in 2024, where adding qubits produced an exponential reduction in the error rate and crossed the fault-tolerance threshold for quantum error correction. IonQ’s Harmony, Aria, and Forte devices offer up to 29–36 algorithmic qubits on 20+ Ba+ ions, with Forte reaching 35 effective qubits in 2024 and a 64-physical-qubit target by 2025. Quantinuum demonstrated 12 fully error-corrected logical qubits in 2024 in partnership with Microsoft, and by mid-2025
