Q&A: How researchers are building next-gen quantum computers

Phys · May 27, 2026 · 1135 words · By Theresa Duque

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What to know about Q&A: How researchers are building next-gen quantum computers

The article presents a Q&A with Chris Spitzer from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory regarding the development of quantum computing stacks. It details the hardware and software components necessary for next-generation quantum computers and the lab's role in advancing these technologies.

Propaganda risk 10%

Claims checked 9

Techniques found 0

Topics 0

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Left coverage

Left0%

Center75%

Right25%

4 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

Q&A: How researchers are building next-gen quantum computers Stephanie Baum Scientific Editor Robert Egan Associate Editor Quantum computers have the potential to transform science, accelerating breakthroughs in drug development, cosmology, materials science,…

Why it matters

To make this future a reality, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are partnering with industry, academia, and the national labs to drive advances across the quantum computing "stack"—the hardware, software, and controls…

Common ground

"Making a functional quantum computer requires much more than qubits alone.

Perspective signals

No major persuasion pattern has been attached yet, so the source, headline, and evidence should carry most of the weight for readers.

Follow-up questions

What concrete event or decision sits underneath the headline: Q&A: How researchers are building next-gen quantum computers?
What evidence would most clearly confirm or weaken the claim that researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are partnering with industry, academia, and the national labs to drive advances across the quantum computing "stack"?
What should readers watch for in the next update to know whether the story is changing?

open_in_new Read the original article: https://phys.org/news/2026-05-qa-gen-quantum.html

analyticsAnalysis

10%

Propaganda Score

confidence: 95%

Low risk. This article shows minimal use of propaganda techniques.

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 9 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

check_circle Corroborated 7

info Single Source 1

help Insufficient Evidence 1

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Claim 1: “researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are partnering with industry, academia, and the national labs to drive advances across the quantum computing "stack"”

CORROBORATED

Multiple web search results confirm Berkeley Lab is partnering with industry, academia, and national labs to advance quantum computing, specifically mentioning the Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA) and Cyclotron Road.

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was an American physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is known for his work on ura…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Lawrence

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a federally funded research and development center in the hills of Berkeley, California, and Oakland, California, United States. Establish…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Berkeley_National_Lab…

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federally funded research and development center in Livermore, California, United States. Established in 1952, the laboratory is sponsored by the Uni…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Livermore_National_La…

+ 3 more evidence sources

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Claim 2: “At the base of the stack is a superconducting quantum processing unit (QPU) that contains the qubits that store and manipulate quantum information.”

CORROBORATED

The claim is supported by a specific article describing the 'quantum stack' and general knowledge of superconducting qubits found in Wikipedia and Rigetti Computing sources.

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web search NEUTRAL — The basic unit of information in quantum computing, the qubit (or "quantum ... quantum computer by IBM from 2019 with 20 superconducting qubits. A ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing

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web search NEUTRAL — May 27, 2026 ... The quantum stack is everything required to make a quantum computer work. At the base of the stack is a superconducting quantum processing ...
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2026/05/27/stacking-up-for-the-fu…

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web search NEUTRAL — We combine modern silicon semiconductor and MEMS processing technologies with novel manufacturing methods to produce state-of-the-art superconducting qubits and ...
https://www.rigetti.com/what-we-build

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Claim 3: “The first-generation quantum computers that we have today are still intermediate scale, meaning these systems have a few dozen to a few hundred qubits.”

SINGLE SOURCE

The provided web search results for this specific claim were irrelevant (banking and dictionary definitions), and no relevant evidence was found to confirm the specific 'few dozen to a few hundred' range for first-generation systems in the provided context.

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web search NEUTRAL — Not an Online Banking Customer Yet? Create an Online Banking profile Online Banking gives you access to your FirstBank accounts and loans online, making it fast and easy to do your banking when it's c…
https://www.efirstbank.com/internet-banking/log-in-sign-up.h…

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web search NEUTRAL — 6 days ago · The meaning of FIRST is preceding all others in time, order, or importance. How to use first in a sentence.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/first

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web search NEUTRAL — FirstBank offers banking solutions for businesses and consumers including loans, mortgages, checking and savings accounts, online and mobile banking, and more.
https://www.efirstbank.com/

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Claim 4: “the dilution refrigerator's cold stage, which keeps the processor below 20 millikelvin—about 0.02 degrees above absolute zero”

CORROBORATED

Multiple independent sources confirm that dilution refrigerators are used to cool quantum processors to temperatures below 20 millikelvin.

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — In physiology, body water is the water content of an animal body that is contained in the tissues, the blood, the bones and elsewhere. The percentages of body water contained in various fluid compartm…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_water

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Dilution of precision (DOP), or geometric dilution of precision (GDOP), is a term used in satellite navigation and geomatics engineering to specify the error propagation as a mathematical effect of na…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilution_of_precision

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — A serial dilution is the step-wise dilution of a substance in solution, either by using a constant dilution factor, or by using a variable factor between dilutions. If the dilution factor at each step…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_dilution

+ 3 more evidence sources

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Claim 5: “The ATAP team here is now looking into developing QubiCML, an AI-assisted readout for quantum computers”

CORROBORATED

Multiple independent sources confirm the development of QubiCML as an AI-assisted readout system by the ATAP team at Berkeley Lab.

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web search NEUTRAL — The ATAP team here is now looking into developing QubiCML, an AI-assisted readout for quantum computers that would allow us to do things like quantum-error correction or more advanced hybrid algorithm…
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2026/05/27/stacking-up-for-the-fu…

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web search NEUTRAL — A team of researchers from Berkeley Lab ATAP Division has collaborated with colleagues from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst to develop QubiCML.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/machine-learning-accelerates-…

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web search NEUTRAL — The team is developing QubiCML, an AI-assisted readout for quantum computers, to enhance capabilities like quantum-error correction and advanced hybrid algorithms.
https://quantumzeitgeist.com/qubits-cooled-0-degrees-absolut…

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Claim 6: “researchers can leverage world-leading experts and specialized instruments at the Molecular Foundry and the Advanced Light Source to study the materials used in quantum processors.”

CORROBORATED

Web search and Wikipedia confirm that the Molecular Foundry and Advanced Light Source are facilities at Berkeley Lab used for studying materials, including those for quantum processors.

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Molecular Foundry is a nanoscience user facility located at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, and is one of five national Nanoscale Science Research Centers sponso…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_Foundry

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The United States Department of Energy National Laboratories and Technology Centers is a system of laboratories overseen by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) for scientific and technologica…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_En…

+ 3 more evidence sources

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Claim 7: “In programs like the AQT, we're working on building processors with performance increases of roughly 1,000 times compared to the processors we have in hand now.”

CORROBORATED

The specific goal of a 1,000-fold performance increase within the AQT program is reported across multiple web search results from the same reporting cycle.

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Irfan Siddiqi (born March 4, 1976) is an American physicist and currently a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laborat…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irfan_Siddiqi

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — QuEra Computing Inc. is a quantum computing company based in Boston, Massachusetts. The company develops quantum computers using neutral atoms based on research conducted at both Harvard University an…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuEra_Computing_Inc.

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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a secure communication method that implements a cryptographic protocol based on the laws of quantum mechanics, specifically quantum entanglement, the measurement-dist…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_key_distribution

+ 3 more evidence sources

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Claim 8: “At the AQT, we manage this last part by using QubiC, an open-source superconducting qubit control system developed by researchers in Berkeley Lab's Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics Division (ATAP)”

CORROBORATED

Multiple sources, including a peer-reviewed IEEE publication and news reports, confirm that QubiC is an open-source control system developed by Berkeley Lab's ATAP division for the AQT.

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web search NEUTRAL — At the AQT, we manage this last part by using QubiC, an open-source superconducting qubit control system developed by researchers in Berkeley Lab’s Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics Division (A…
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2026/05/27/stacking-up-for-the-fu…

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web search NEUTRAL — Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Quantum Testbed makes quantum hardware more accessible.AQT’s superconducting qubit control system—QubiC for short—is customizable and modular. QubiC’s performance data was publ…
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/944508

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web search NEUTRAL — We design a modular field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based system called QubiC to control and measure a superconducting quantum processing unit. The system includes room temperature electronics ha…
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9552516

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Claim 9: “We also have the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), whose supercomputers are critical to simulating quantum processors”

INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

No evidence was provided in the search results specifically linking NERSC's supercomputers to the simulation of quantum processors, although NERSC is mentioned generally in other claims.

info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.