You don't know if you're playing DOOM or WOOD until you look

So statistically, on average, it just about plays Doom

The attached picture says 133 qubits, so whatever that chip is (edit: Heron) it's not this thing.

IBM's post (that the article links) says:

Breaking the 1,000-qubit barrier with Condor

We have introduced IBM Condor, a 1,121 superconducting qubit quantum processor based on our cross-resonance gate technology. Condor pushes the limits of scale and yield in chip design with a 50% increase in qubit density, advances in qubit fabrication and laminate size, and includes over a mile of high-density cryogenic flex IO wiring within a single dilution refigerator.

So, it sounds like this is actually another fridge sized system.

I may be mistaken but the fridge sized copper monstrosity is the system that cool the quantum chip, so unless they miniaturized the cooling system it didn't change.

From what I remember the chip itself is pretty small, the size is all due to the cooling component.

Also keep in mind you've probably seen a development version of a quantum computer, where things are set up to be easily accessible to allow fixing and tinkering, without regard for size and optimization of space.

From what i heard, even 1,000 qubits isn't close to enough for modern passwords: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00017-0

If by "cracking passwords" you mean reversing password hashes in a database, quantum computers aren't going to make a big dent there. The standard industry ways of doing that wouldn't be affected much by QCs. Breaking encryption, OTOH, with QCs is a concern, but also vastly overrated. It would take orders of magnitude more qubits to pull off than what's been worked on so far, and it may not be feasible to juggle that many qubits in a state of superposition.

I get really annoyed when people focus on breaking encryption with QCs. They are far more interesting and useful than that.

QC can make logistics more efficient. Have you ever seen photos of someone unpacking a giant Amazon box holding one little micro SD card? Amazon isn't dumb about these things, but our best methods of packing an entire truck is a guess. Packing algorithms would take too long to calculate how to perfectly pack it, so they come up with a solution that seems OK, and that leads to a few "filler" boxes that are unnecessarily large, among other inefficiencies. QC can solve this problem without taking the age of the universe to come up with a solution.

The order in which that truck delivers those packages can also be made more efficient with QC.

Then there's molecular simulations, which have the promise of making medications that are more effective, more likely to pass trials, and with fewer side effects. This can be done far faster on a QC.

Wasn’t the controller on the arcade a goddamn roll ball? Ugg

More importantly, how long until I can guarantee a 51% chance of solving every bitcoin block?