The authors use quantum discord to characterize the correlations in the DQC1 (power of one qubit) model, which involves a collection of qubits in a completely mixed state coupled to a single control qubit with nonzero purity. Despite the lack of entanglement between the control qubit and the mixed qubits, the quantum discord across this split is shown to be nonzero for typical instances of the DQC1 circuit. Quantum discord, introduced by Ollivier and Zurek, captures nonclassical correlations, including entanglement, and is defined as the difference between mutual information and a measurement-independent mutual information. The authors derive an analytical expression for the quantum discord in the DQC1 circuit and show that it grows monotonically from 0 at a completely mixed control qubit to a maximum value of 0.5573 at a pure control qubit. This indicates the presence of nonclassical correlations in the DQC1 circuit even when no entanglement is detectable. The results suggest that quantum discord could be a better figure of merit for characterizing the quantum resources available to a quantum information processor, particularly in mixed-state quantum computation.The authors use quantum discord to characterize the correlations in the DQC1 (power of one qubit) model, which involves a collection of qubits in a completely mixed state coupled to a single control qubit with nonzero purity. Despite the lack of entanglement between the control qubit and the mixed qubits, the quantum discord across this split is shown to be nonzero for typical instances of the DQC1 circuit. Quantum discord, introduced by Ollivier and Zurek, captures nonclassical correlations, including entanglement, and is defined as the difference between mutual information and a measurement-independent mutual information. The authors derive an analytical expression for the quantum discord in the DQC1 circuit and show that it grows monotonically from 0 at a completely mixed control qubit to a maximum value of 0.5573 at a pure control qubit. This indicates the presence of nonclassical correlations in the DQC1 circuit even when no entanglement is detectable. The results suggest that quantum discord could be a better figure of merit for characterizing the quantum resources available to a quantum information processor, particularly in mixed-state quantum computation.