Google says it has just taken a huge step forward in quantum computing
- Google unveils Willow quantum chip and promises big leaps forward
- Willow can outperform previous generations of chips in a range of benchmarks
- The chip has the potential for exponential error reduction – an important milestone
Google has unveiled a new quantum chip capable of exponential error reduction – a huge milestone in the journey to quantum advantage.
The release of Willow marks the second milestone in Google’s journey to creating a large, error-corrected quantum computer.
When tested using the random circuit sampling benchmark, Willow was able to complete the benchmark in five minutes – just slightly faster than the world’s current fastest supercomputer, which would take 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
A small step for quantum calculations
The chip was made in Google’s purpose-built Santa Barbara lab, where Willow houses 105 qubits. A qubit is the quantum equivalent of a ‘bit’ used in classical computing, the difference being that a qubit can exist as binary one and zero simultaneously, thanks to a qubit’s ability to exist in a state known as superposition.
Willow’s qubits are also capable of holding their excitation state, their “one” state in binary terms, for almost 100 microseconds – five times longer than previous generations of chips produced by Google.
While the benchmarks performed by Willow are impressive, they are only a step toward creating a viable quantum computer that offers a real advantage over a classical computer. Today’s quantum computers may be faster at solving certain problems, but classical computing is better optimized for a wider range of tasks that are not only scientifically feasible, but also commercially feasible.
In one blog postAnnouncing the launch, Hartmut Neven, founder and leader of Google Quantum AI, said: “On the one hand, we ran the RCS benchmark, which measures performance against classical computers, but has no real applications. On the other hand, we have done scientifically interesting simulations of quantum systems, which have led to new scientific discoveries, but are still within the reach of classical computers.”