Quantinuum "Skinny Logic" Achieves Record 2:1 Physical-to-Logical Qubit Ratio

Quantinuum's Skinny Logic initiative, demonstrated on its 98-qubit Helios trapped-ion processor, achieved 48 error-corrected logical qubits from 98 physical qubits - a 2:1 ratio. For comparison, surface codes (the dominant approach) typically require 500:1 to 1,000:1. Logical qubits outperformed their physical counterparts by 10 to 100x.

Why This Matters for Crypto: The Google whitepaper now sets the minimum attack threshold at ~1,200 logical qubits. The Oratomic paper shows this can be achieved with ~10,000-26,000 physical qubits using high-rate qLDPC codes. The Skinny Logic result is a separate approach (trapped-ion + modified surface codes) reaching 2:1, showing that the qubit overhead reduction is occurring across multiple hardware platforms simultaneously.