Google has unveiled its latest quantum computing chip, called Willow, saying it delivers groundbreaking capabilities in error correction and computational power -- like completing a complex computing challenge in five minutes that would take one of today's fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years, or far longer than the universe has been around.
This is a remarkable upgrade from Google's 2019 declaration that its quantum processor at the time, called Sycamore, could solve an equation in three minutes compared with 10,000 years on a supercomputer. (At the time, IBM pushed back on the claim, calling it overly optimistic.)
The latest advancements, however, may signal major progress toward building a large-scale quantum computer capable of addressing complex scientific and societal challenges. Unlike traditional computers, quantum computers can process tons of data at the same time in a way that could be transformative for areas including science, medicine, energy and AI.
However, quantum computing is prone to errors because of the instability of qubits, the fundamental units of quantum computation. Google said that Willow, which has 105 qubits, overcomes these issues by scaling up the number of qubits in a way that "exponentially" reduces errors.
"The more qubits we use in Willow, the more we reduce errors, and the more quantum the system becomes," Hartmut Neven, founder and lead of Google Quantum AI, wrote in a Google blog post on Monday. "This cracks a key challenge in quantum error correction that the field has pursued for almost 30 years."
Google also published the results of Willow's performance in the journal Nature, and you can see a summation of Willow's capabilities in the video clip above.
"Looking to the future with Willow," Julian Kelly, director of hardware, Google Quantum AI, says in the video, "we continue to build large-scale useful error-corrected quantum computers that will push the boundaries of science and the exploration of nature. With future commercially useful applications in areas like pharmaceuticals, batteries and fusion power, we are excited to solve the otherwise unsolvable problems of tomorrow."
Neven also noted in the blog post that the latest milestone is the result of over 10 years of work, noting it "moves us significantly along that path toward commercially relevant applications."