Reading a QPU Specification Page

Read a QPU spec page as an evidence record: every number needs a source, date, method, scope, aggregation, and uncertainty, and all fields must describe the same device revision. "Not publicly disclosed" is an explicit, dated finding — a different state from a value that is merely missing or stale.

A spec page is an evidence record

A QPU specification page looks like a product sheet, but the useful way to read it is as an evidence record: a set of claims, each of which either carries its supporting context or does not. A number without context is not information yet.

Every numeric claim needs six fields:

Source — who published it: the vendor, or an independent team.
Date — when it was measured, not when it was marketed. Calibration drifts, so numbers age.
Method — the protocol behind it, for example randomized benchmarking (running random gate sequences and fitting the decay of success to get an average error per gate).
Scope — which qubits or pairs it describes: one golden pair, or the whole chip.
Aggregation — how many measurements were folded into one number: best, median, or mean.
Uncertainty — the error bars; a fidelity quoted to four decimal places with no uncertainty is a red flag.

The two worked examples below show how each field changes what a number is worth.