Claude Mythos 5 Cuts DQI Decoder Gate Count 12x vs Google
TL;DR
- Claude beat prior art on 7 of 8 circuits; on the eighth, it accepted 12% more qubits to achieve 17x fewer gates.
- The Reed-Solomon gain came from autonomously switching to Berlekamp-Massey decoding, a known algorithm Claude surfaced without human direction.
- All circuits are computationally verified, not run on physical hardware; actual costs depend on topology, scheduling, and error-correction overhead.
Claude Mythos 5 beat the best previously published quantum-circuit designs on eight computational primitives, including a Reed-Solomon decoder for Decoded Quantum Interferometry whose gate count came in 12 times smaller than Google's previous construction, according to Anthropic.
The headline numbers sit inside a specific setup. Claude ran in a closed loop with an evaluator program that scored qubit and gate counts and iterated without human intervention between rounds. In the elliptic-curve point-addition family, "one circuit in the family uses 12% more qubits but 17x fewer gates" than the smallest previous design, the post reports, calling it the result of a single 53-hour run.
On the DQI decoder, Anthropic says Claude swapped the extended Euclidean algorithm for Berlekamp–Massey decoding and then empirically pruned the memory budget. "Claude ran 403 million sample decodings to measure how often these exceptions actually occurred," the write-up reads, which let it set aside room for just one saved value, or 19 qubits, in place of a worst-case 665. Failures land near 1 in 10,000, which the authors call acceptable. The 12x gate reduction is measured relative to a construction credited to Google, which the post links directly.
The work was led by Andi Gu through Anthropic's STEM Fellows Program, with mentorship from Alek Kemeny, a quantum physicist at Anthropic, and in collaboration with Susanne Yelin and Mikhail Lukin of Harvard, the latter also affiliated with QuEra Computing. On the chemistry side, "when compiling a circuit for simulating an iron-sulfide molecule, Claude noticed that the molecule's symmetries and repeating structure meant that some results could be calculated once and reused," the authors report, part of an arc from 2017 estimates for the FeMoco simulation that the post frames as "a roughly 150,000-fold reduction" in gate counts.
Claude's limits show up in the write-up's own hedges. The authors note the model repeatedly second-guessed its results, and they say they had to force parallel exploration of qualitatively different approaches before it would commit to a direction.
What others are reporting
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The Quantum Insider Read →
Specialized quantum outlet adds hardware-validation caveat: circuits are resource-estimated not run on hardware, and Claude initially needed prompting to explore novel approaches.
One redesigned decoding circuit used roughly 12 times fewer costly quantum operations
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Forklog Read →
Highlights the novel math: Claude discovered new algebraic identities and a reversible divsteps algorithm; notes the elliptic-curve design fails roughly 1 in 10,000 runs.
Claude proposed reconstructing this information directly from the current state of computation, without storing branch history.
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CryptoBriefing Read →
Frames Claude as an autonomous research collaborator via the STEM Fellows Program, positioning the result as a template for AI-accelerated scientific discovery.
Claude's circuits came in under the previous state-of-the-art designs...up to 17 times fewer gates than earlier approaches.
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Neoteo Read →
Explicitly breaks down the 7-of-8 result, framing the eighth task as a deliberate tradeoff: 12% more qubits accepted to achieve 17x gate reduction.
Seven of eight tasks significantly reduced both Toffoli-gate and qubit counts.
Originally reported by anthropic.com
Read the original article →Original headline: Anthropic Says Claude Redesigned 8 Quantum Circuits, Cut Reed-Solomon Gate Count ~12x vs Google's