This intermediate-scale is defined by the quantum volume, which is based on the moderate number of qubits and gate fidelity.
[11][5][12][13] These methods constitute a way of reducing the effect of noise by running a set of circuits and applying post-processing to the measured data.
The creation of a computer with tens of thousands of qubits and enough error correction would eventually end the NISQ era.
[4] These beyond-NISQ devices would be able to, for example, implement Shor's algorithm for very large numbers and break RSA encryption.
[14] In April 2024, researchers at Microsoft announced a significant reduction in error rates that required only 4 logical qubits, suggesting that quantum computing at scale could be years away instead of decades.