Google's Willow supercomputer is able to perform tasks that would take septillions of years in just 5 minutes

Google has announced the development of a new quantum computing chip, Willow. The chip is a product of the Google Quantum AI team, which has worked for over a decade to create a large-scale, practical quantum computer.

The chip is designed to scale up in size without introducing errors, a significant challenge in quantum computing. The more qubits in a quantum computer, the more likely it is to make errors. By reducing these errors, Willow can perform computations that would take classical computers a long time to complete.

In a blog post, Google says Willow can complete computations that would take today’s most powerful supercomputers ten septillion years to complete, vastly exceeding the universe’s age. The team also demonstrated that Willow can effectively reduce errors at a higher scale, a breakthrough in quantum error correction. This advancement is crucial for making quantum computers practically useful.

The Google Quantum AI team is working on developing quantum algorithms that can solve real-world problems, such as simulating the behavior of molecules for drug discovery or optimizing supply chains.

The team has demonstrated that quantum computers outperform classical computers at specific tasks. In October, Google unveiled the “quantum advantage” of its Sycamore processor, which can solve specific problems faster than the world’s best supercomputers. Now, Google wants to take its quantum algorithms to the next level with Willow.

Ultimately, Google envisions a future where quantum computers work in concert with classical computers, helping scientists and researchers tackle some of the most significant challenges we face today.

Willow is the latest in a line of increasingly powerful quantum processors from Google. The company’s Sycamore processor hit 100 qubits — the number of qubits needed to make a quantum computer more powerful than a classical computer at certain tasks in 2019.

With 105 qubits, Willow doesn’t have the most qubits of any quantum processor. But Google claims that the chip’s qubits are “higher quality” than those in other chips — that is, the qubits’ performance is less likely to degrade over time.

It’s worth noting that qubit count, while important, isn’t the only factor that determines the performance of a quantum processor. (Qubits are the fundamental units of computation in a quantum computer.) Error rates, connectivity, and the ability to perform error correction also come into play.

In addition to Willow, Google introduced a family of quantum hardware—the Ion series—that “advances the state of the art for superconducting quantum technology. ” The series includes the chip-to-chip connection technology that Google aims to incorporate in its quantum processors in the future.