SOURCE-LINKED INTELLIGENCE
A Sim-to-Real Study of Surface-Code Decoder Benchmarking
Quantum error-correction decoders are typically benchmarked against synthetic circuit-level noise, under the assumption that a decoder's ranking under such noise transfers to hardware and improves as the noise model becomes more realistic. The Willow processor, the first to operate below the surface-code threshold, allows us to test this assumption. We rank a panel of six decoders using a four-rung ladder of noise models with increasing fidelity, evaluated against real data across three code distances, two bases, and fifteen round counts. Rank agreement with hardware appears once the noise mod
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Evidence & attribution
- arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · 2026-09-03T23:24:40.000Z
First collected: 2026-09-21T04:31:57.454Z. This is not the publication date.