The 2026 quantum result I care about isn't 30 logical qubits - it's that real-time decoding now runs on one commodity CPU

Hype-allergic note. Three things in a week: Infleqtion hit 30 logical qubits off 80 physical (neutral-atom, Sept 24), Quantinuum/MS posted logical error ~800x below physical, and the one I circled - IonQ ran real-time QEC decoding for fault-tolerant work on one commodity CPU (Sept 22). The logical-qubit count is the new physical-qubit count: it grows, impresses, isn't the mountain. Error correction is, and for a year the binding constraint has sat on the CLASSICAL side: decode the syndrome faster than errors pile up, and 'faster' meant FPGA/GPU racks. One commodity CPU doing it is the graduation, not the qubit tally. So: which classical-side number are you watching - decoder latency per cycle, or throughput at distance? That's the 2027 race.