Google’s quantum chip Willow achieves once-elusive benchmark, researchers say

Google says its latest state-of-the-art quantum computing chip Willow has just reached a new milestone in the quest for reliable quantum computing.

Researchers from Google’s Quantum AI team unveiled their latest champion – a 105-qubit superconducting processor chip named Willow – in a flurry of blog posts on Monday.

The reveal coincides with the team’s new research paper published in the Nature Journal of Science, also on Monday.

According to Google, what makes the next-gen Willow chip so buzz-worthy is that it's the first time after nearly 30 years of quantum research that scientists have been able to crack a key challenge in quantum error correction.

Today we unveiled our latest quantum chip, Willow. But how does quantum computing work? What even is a qubit? Our @GoogleQuantumAI team is here to teach you the basics — and give you a tour of their lab ↓ https://t.co/8ROLn9E2DK

undefined Google (@Google) December 9, 2024

Researchers say they have figured out a way to string together Willow chip's qubits – the building blocks of quantum computers – to exponentially reduce errors in quantum computing even when the number of qubits goes up, a practice proven elusive before Google’s findings.

Furthermore, the Willow chip has also shown the ability to “process certain computations faster than supercomputers could within known timescales in physics,” the blog said.

Essentially, this means that these state-of-the-art processors can solve a computing problem in under five minutes, which, by comparison, according to Google, would take today’s fastest supercomputers about 10 septillion years (10²⁵ ) or equal to "more time than the history of the universe."

These two major achievements in error correction and performance "paves the way to a useful, large-scale quantum computer,” said Hartmut Neven, Founder and Lead of Google Quantum AI.

To put it in perspective, Neven founded Google AI in 2012 with the vision of building an advanced “operating system” that could “harness quantum mechanics” all to advance scientific discovery for the benefit of society.

These potential scientific applications are expected to have a major impact across many fields, ranging from chemistry and drug discovery to optimization and cryptography, the research states.

Unfortunately, most state-of-the-art quantum applications require billions, if not trillions, of operations to execute reliably and will typically experience at least one failure in every thousand operations – failures that, up until now, have hindered the full potential of quantum computing.

“Our team has charted a long-term roadmap, and Willow moves us significantly along that path towards commercially relevant applications,” Neven wrote in his Google blog introducing the quantum chip.

Some of Google's chip-making rivals, such as IBM, Microsoft, and International Business Machines are producing chips with a larger number of qubits than Google, but Google is focused on making the most reliable qubits it can, Anthony Megrant, the Chief Architect for Google Quantum AI, said in a recent interview, Reuters reported.

Google said that Willow was fabricated at its new state-of-the-art facility in Santa Barbara — one of only a few facilities in the world built from the ground up for this purpose.

Calling it "mind-boggling,” Neven said the entire notion supports the theory that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, pointing out that this would also back another theory first posed by physicist David Deutsch, that we live in a true multiverse.