Google on Monday showed off a new quantum computing chip that it said was a breakthrough that could bring practical quantum computing closer to reality.
A custom chip called “Willow” does in minutes what it would take leading supercomputers 10 septillion years to complete, Google Quantum AI (artificial intelligence) founder Hartmut Neven said.
“Written out, there is a 1 with 25 zeros,” Neven said of the time span while briefing journalists.
Photo: AFP via Google
“A mind-boggling number,” Neven added.
Neven’s team of about 300 people at Google is on a mission to build quantum computing capable of handling otherwise unsolvable problems like safe fusion power and stopping climate change.
“We see Willow as an important step in our journey to build a useful quantum computer with practical applications in areas like drug discovery, fusion energy, battery design and more,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said on X.
A quantum computer that can tackle these challenges is still years away, but Willow marks a significant step in that direction, Google said.
While still in its early stages, scientists believe that superfast quantum computing would eventually be able to power innovation in a range of fields.
Quantum research is seen as a critical field and the US and China have been investing heavily in the area, while Washington has also placed restrictions on the export of the sensitive technology.
Private and public investment in the field has totaled about US$20 billion worldwide over the past five years, Olivier Ezratty, an independent expert in quantum technologies, said in October.
Regular computers function in binary fashion: They carry out tasks using tiny fragments of data known as bits that are only ever either expressed as 1 or 0.
However, fragments of data on a quantum computer, known as qubits, can be 1 and 0 at the same time — allowing them to crunch an enormous number of potential outcomes simultaneously.
Crucially, Google’s chip demonstrated the ability to reduce computational errors exponentially as it scales up — a feat that has eluded researchers for about 30 years.
The breakthrough in error correction, published in leading science journal Nature, showed that adding more qubits to the system reduced errors rather than increasing them — a fundamental requirement for building practical quantum computers.
Error correction is the “end game” in quantum computing and Google is “confidently progressing” along the path, Google quantum hardware director Julian Kelly said.
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