Five tracks · four gates · one weekly review
QONTOS is hosted at the Zhyra Quantum Research Institute. Five engineering tracks run in parallel against four formal gates. Every milestone is a measurable subsystem behaviour, not a calendar event. The whitepaper is the source of truth; this page is the operating record behind it.
Five tracks. Four gates. One programme, run with engineering discipline.
PROGRAMME AT A GLANCE
The QONTOS programme commits to subsystem behaviours, not dates. Every number below is anchored to a measurable specification in the whitepaper. Calendar slippage is a metric, not the metric.
ENGINEERING TRACKS
5 device · control · interconnect · software · QECFORMAL GATES
4 G1 · G2 · G3 · G4 · public criteriaQONTOS-1 QUBITS
1,000 two modules · 500 transmons each · tantalum-on-siliconWHITEPAPER PAGES
v5.4 v5.4 · peer-review draft · CC-BY-4.0 sourcePROGRAMME TIMELINE
G2 gate first module acceptance · no calendar claimMISSION · § 0.1
Monolithic superconducting systems plateau near 1,000 qubits because thermal load, wiring density, frequency crowding, and chiplet yield compound non-linearly inside one envelope. QONTOS resolves the ceiling by separating qubit count from the single-envelope budget. Modules are entangled by heralded microwave-to-optical photonic interconnects. The five-generation arc now separates the QONTOS-1 engineering target, QONTOS-2/3 scenarios, and QONTOS-4/5 research vision.
QONTOS exists to turn a modular architecture from a paper into an operable end-to-end machine at QONTOS-1 scale, and then to extend it across the family arc. The work is engineering, not advocacy. The numbers are public, the gates are public, and the misses are public.
The first machine, QONTOS-1, fields two modules at 500 transmons each, photonically interconnected through a millikelvin transducer, with a one-logical-qubit validation experiment at G4. The successor generations do not scale by calendar promise; they proceed only when the prior gate closes, and QONTOS-4/5 remain research-vision architecture studies.
Every claim ties to a measurable subsystem behaviour. We publish what works and what does not.
Whitepaper, SDK, decoder RTL, datasets, gate criteria. Closed only where IP residency requires.
Calendars slip. Subsystem behaviours do not lie. The roadmap is keyed to gates G1 through G4.
Device, control, interconnect, software, QEC are run by one programme, with one weekly engineering review.
Calibration epoch, firmware SHA, compiler version, decoder weights, raw data hash. No silent aggregation.
Time on the device is reserved for independent labs; their reports are published alongside ours.
FIVE ENGINEERING TRACKS · T1 → T5
The programme is organised around five engineering tracks. Each track owns its subsystem, its specification, and its share of the gate criteria. Crosscutting decisions go through one weekly programme review. Track leads are named in the steering minutes.
T1 · DEVICE
Tantalum-on-silicon chiplets, heavy-hex topology, tunable couplers, native-gate set frozen at the chip level. Owns T₁ statistics, calibrated-edge yield, and the chip family roadmap.
T2 · CONTROL
Quantum Machines OPX 1000 deployment, pulse compiler, real-time decoder loop, calibration cadence. Owns the 5.5 µs d=5 decoder budget, the 24-hour epoch, and the calibration record.
T3 · INTERCONNECT
Electro-optic transducer, 1,550 nm photonic link, SNSPD detection, heralded Bell-state measurement. Single most novel risk on QONTOS-1. Owns η ≥ 0.1% base acceptance, raw F ≥ 0.85, false-herald fraction, thermal load, and added-noise budgets.
T4 · SOFTWARE
Open-source qontos-sdk compiler, partitioner, executor contract, proof artifact. Lives at github.com/qontos. Backend-agnostic today; native at G2.
T5 · QEC
Rotated surface-code roadmap, sparse-blossom decoder reference, magic-state factory cadence, resource estimator. Co-owns the 0.75 percentage-point above-threshold gap and the requirement that ε_L < p_phys is not claimed until QONTOS-2.
PROGRAMME GATES · MASTER TIMELINE
G1 freezes architecture. G2 lights the first module. G3 lights the interconnect. G4 lights the first logical qubit. Each gate has a published acceptance criterion and a published "what happens on miss" plan.
FIG.G · PROGRAMME GATES · ACCEPTANCE SEQUENCE
Each dark bar is the gate-defining work for its track. Lighter bars are concurrent. Crosscutting decisions go through the weekly programme review; track leads are accountable per gate.
LEADERSHIP · ORG STRUCTURE
The QONTOS programme is run by ten named owners: a director, five track leads, a chief of staff, a programme operations lead, a research operations lead, and a governance officer. The list below is the public org. Hiring rolls are not.
Programme Director · Acting T5 lead
Programme owner. Co-author of the v5.4 whitepaper. Architecture sign-off on every gate. PhD plasma physics; eight years quantum systems engineering before QONTOS.
T1 · Device lead
Owns the chip family roadmap. Previously fabrication lead at IBM Yorktown. First-author on the tantalum-on-silicon T₁ study.
T2 · Control lead
Owns the real-time control loop and the calibration cadence. Previously firmware lead on the OPX 1000 deployment at Quantum Machines.
T3 · Interconnect lead
Owns the photonic transducer and the heralded Bell-pair budget. PhD cryogenic photonics, Stanford Ginzton. Six years on electro-optic transducers.
T4 · Software lead
Owns qontos-sdk. Previously platform engineering lead at Rigetti Forest. Maintainer of the public partitioner reference.
Chief of staff
Programme operations across the five tracks. Owns the steering-committee minutes and the public reporting cadence. Background in PMO at semi-fab operations.
Programme operations
Owns vendor relationships, cryostat suite logistics, and the construction roadmap of the new wing. Background in datacentre build-outs.
Research operations
Owns visiting-researcher allocations, dataset releases, and the reproducibility manifesto. Co-author of the seven principles published in Research § A.
Governance · steering chair
Chairs the steering committee. Owns the external advisory board calendar and the public-issue tracker for missed-gate disclosures.
Independent scientific advisor · seat 6
Streaming-decoder theory. Rotating chair of the scientific advisory board (2026 H2). No financial interest in the programme.
GOVERNANCE · STEERING + ADVISORY
QONTOS is governed by a Steering Committee (weekly engineering review, monthly resource review) and an external Scientific Advisory Board (quarterly research review, annual gate review). Both bodies publish minutes within seven days. Neither body controls budget allocations unilaterally.
STEERING COMMITTEE
qontos-research/governanceSCIENTIFIC ADVISORY BOARD
ESCALATION
FACILITY · ABU DHABI
QONTOS is hosted at the Zhyra Quantum Research Institute in Abu Dhabi, in a purpose-built wing on the Saadiyat campus. The wing is sized for the two QONTOS-1 modules with room for two more on the QONTOS-2 line. The floor plan below is to scale.
FIG.F · ZHYRA QRI · QONTOS WING · GROUND FLOOR · 2026
CRYO-A and CRYO-B host the two QONTOS-1 modules with vibration-isolated slabs. The photonic seam between them is a temperature-controlled fibre run with the transducer suite mounted on the wall between the rooms. Bench and office space sits south of the cryo corridor.
FUNDING + PARTNERS
The QONTOS programme is funded through gated subsystem reviews. Vendor and academic partnerships are documented in the public partner-register; commercial terms are summarised below.
HOST INSTITUTION
The institute hosts the QONTOS programme, funds the QONTOS-1 build through G4, and provides the Saadiyat wing. Three-year renewable funding cycle aligned with the gate schedule.
INFRASTRUCTURE · CRYOGENICS
Supplies the two LD400 dilution refrigerators. Joint engineering on cryostat vibration isolation and bottom-loader access for the photonic seam.
CONTROL · FIRMWARE
OPX 1000 controller deployment plus joint publication on FPGA-resident MWPM. Three-year service agreement aligned with the device family.
DETECTORS · SNSPD
Cryogenic single-photon detector pairing. Owns the < 100 ns timing-jitter specification feeding into the Bell-pair fidelity budget.
CHIP FAB
Custom tantalum-on-silicon chiplets. Public via published wafer geometry and the QC1-DT-500-TaSi module spec. Vendor name withheld per NDA.
PHOTONICS · TRANSDUCER
Joint development of the cryogenic electro-optic transducer. Owns the loss-budget audit. Open publication track for the Area-A research charter.
DECODER · RTL
Reference RTL for the sparse-blossom MWPM variant on Xilinx Versal. Open licence. Joint authorship on the Nature Electronics submission.
PROGRAMME UPDATES · NEWS
Programme updates are published monthly with the same provenance discipline as the research results: dated, attributed, anchored to a subsystem behaviour. Every update either advances a gate or honestly reports a setback.
2026 · MAY · WHITEPAPER
Fifty-six pages of architecture, QEC, runtime, and resource estimates. Open for external review. Errata channel open through July 31. Mirrored on the institute archive under a permanent DOI.
programme · release2026 · APR · DEVICE
Median T₁, p95, and outlier behaviour are tracked across the 100-qubit chiplet units that compose each 500-qubit module. Drift envelope and calibrated-edge yield feed the G2 acceptance record.
T1 · publication2026 · MAR · INTERCONNECT
QONTOS-1 now carries η ≥ 0.1% as base acceptance, η ≥ 0.5% as aggressive scenario, and η ≥ 1% as a research threshold. Thermal load, added noise, and false-herald fraction are tracked as gate criteria.
T3 · result2026 · FEB · SOFTWARE
Public open-source release of the runtime, partitioner, and proof emitter. Three external labs reproducing the partition-benchmark results within statistical uncertainty.
T4 · release2026 · JAN · QEC
Sparse-blossom FPGA work targets the QONTOS-1 d=5 loop. Decoder scaling beyond d=11 remains a research risk and is no longer presented as a fixed-latency commitment.
T5 · result2025 · DEC · INTERCONNECT · MISS
The earlier 1% base target was above the conservative evidence base. v5.4 lowers QONTOS-1 acceptance to 0.1% and makes higher efficiencies research thresholds.
T3 · miss disclosedCAREERS · OPEN ROLES
We hire engineers and researchers against named subsystem behaviours. Every role names the gate it retires risk on, the track it sits inside, and the experience it requires. Applications are reviewed weekly; offers are extended within thirty days of the on-site round.
T1 · DEVICE · STAFF
Owns the tantalum-on-silicon chip family. Drives yield improvement and collision mitigation on 500-qubit module wafers. Reports to T1 lead.
T2 · CONTROL · STAFF
Owns the sparse-blossom MWPM RTL on Versal AI Core. Pipelined design at d=15. Joint publication track with TUM.
T3 · INTERCONNECT · PRINCIPAL
Owns the electro-optic transducer roadmap from η ≥ 0.1% base acceptance toward higher research thresholds. Co-leads the Bell-pair fidelity, added-noise, false-herald, and thermal budgets.
T4 · SOFTWARE · SENIOR
Owns the compilation pipeline pass interface. Adds passes for the QONTOS-1 native gate set. Maintains the open partitioner reference.
T5 · QEC · RESEARCH
Owns streaming-decoder research. Targets the OP-01 open problem on bounded-latency decoding. Publication-track hire.
T5 · QEC · RESEARCH
Owns the path from γ ≈ 1.3 to γ < 1 on the magic-state factory. Targets the OP-03 open problem. Joint Tsinghua track.
OPERATIONS · STAFF
Owns the day-to-day operation of CRYO-A and CRYO-B. On-call rotation for cryostat events and cosmic-ray catalogue.
OPERATIONS · STAFF
Plans the QONTOS-2 facility expansion. Vendor-side ownership of the four-cryostat suite for the next generation.
APPLICATION
Apply through careers@qontos.xyz with a CV, a one-page statement against the gate the role retires, and three named references. Reviewed within seven days. Visa support available for all eligible roles. Equal opportunity employer; QONTOS hires on the published criteria only.
CONTACT · GET IN TOUCH
QONTOS routes external traffic through five inboxes, each owned by a named team member. Response SLAs are public.
PROGRAMME
General programme enquiries. Whitepaper feedback. Steering-committee referrals.
SLA · 3 business days · Sahar EbrahimiRESEARCH
Research collaborations. Open-problem submissions. Visiting-researcher allocations. Dataset access requests.
SLA · 5 business days · Lien VergauwenCAREERS
Open-role applications. Internship enquiries. Speaker and seminar requests for university outreach.
SLA · 7 business days · talent operationsPRESS
Press, analyst, and conference enquiries. Embargoed-result requests. Photography and B-roll arrangements.
SLA · 1 business day · Mariam OthmanGRANTS
Research-grant proposals across the three tracks. Reviewed quarterly by the external scientific advisory board.
Quarterly window · open · advisor reviewVENDOR
Vendor and partner enquiries. RFI / RFQ routing through programme operations. Mutual NDA template available on request.
SLA · 7 business days · Yusuf KaranFACILITY ADDRESS
Zhyra Quantum Research Institute · QONTOS Programme
Saadiyat Cultural District · Abu Dhabi · United Arab Emirates
+971 2 XXX XXXX · geo: 24.5396 N, 54.4451 E
The QONTOS site exists to make the programme operable from the outside in. Whitepaper, gate criteria, steering minutes, missed-gate disclosures, dataset releases, open code, and the role catalogue all live here. None of it is aspirational. If a number is on the page, it is anchored to a measurable subsystem behaviour. If it is not, it is not on the page.
Read the whitepaper. Apply for a role. Submit a research proposal. Run an open dataset against your decoder. Or just track the miss/hit ratio across the five tracks. We publish all of it.