Google Unveils Breakthrough Quantum Chip ‘Willow’

Google’s quantum computing lab has achieved a significant breakthrough with its new chip, Willow, which completes a computing process in below 5 minutes—a feat that may take the world’s quickest supercomputers 10 septillion years. This achievement surpasses Google’s 2019 milestone, the place its quantum processor solved a mathematical downside in three minutes, in comparison with 10,000 years on a supercomputer.

Introducing Willow, our new state-of-the-art quantum computing chip with a breakthrough that may scale back errors exponentially as we scale up utilizing extra qubits, cracking a 30-year problem within the area. In benchmark exams, Willow solved a normal computation in <5 minutes that may…

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) December 9, 2024

Key to this development is Google’s progress in error discount, a major problem in quantum computing. In contrast to conventional computing bits, quantum computer systems use qubits, which might characterize a number of states concurrently. Nonetheless, qubits are vulnerable to errors as a result of interactions with their surroundings.

Google has mitigated this problem by growing the variety of qubits and implementing real-time error correction, reaching what’s often known as “beneath threshold” efficiency—a vital step for scalable quantum computing. The analysis, published in Nature, marks important progress since quantum error correction was first proposed in 1995.

Willow, with 105 qubits, is now described as having “best-in-class efficiency.” Google’s subsequent purpose is to realize a “helpful, beyond-classical” computation related to real-world functions, equivalent to AI information assortment, new medication discovery, environment friendly battery designs, and developments in fusion power.

Hartmut Neven, founding father of Google Quantum AI, emphasised that quantum know-how may develop into indispensable in addressing crucial challenges. Competing firms like Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM are additionally advancing their quantum computing methods, pushing the sector towards sensible functions.

Filed in Computers. Learn extra about Google.