Google announced their latest quantum chip, Willow. The Willow chip boasts state-of-the-art computing performance across various metrics. Google’s Willow chip achieves breakthrough in quantum computing. It leads to two breakthroughs:
First, Willow can reduce computing errors as they scale up using more qubits, solving a key challenge in quantum error correction pursued for nearly 30 years.
Second, Willow shows a standard benchmark computation performance in under 5 minutes. A task that would take today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion (10^25) years.
Google Quantum Computing Chip Willow Key Takeaways
- Google has made significant progress in quantum computing with its new Willow chip.
- In just five minutes, the Willow chip can solve problems that would take today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years to complete.
- This milestone could revolutionize AI and quantum computing, offering a glimpse into the future of these technologies.
The Willow chip shows a good milestone in a journey that began over 10 years ago. When they founded Google Quantum AI in 2012, the goal was to build a large-scale quantum computer harnessing quantum mechanics—nature’s “operating system” – to” benefit society through scientific discovery, useful applications, and solving major societal challenges.” The Google Research team has developed a long-term roadmap.
Quantum Error Correction – Below Threshold
Errors are a major challenge in quantum computing because of qubits. The computation units quickly exchange information with their environment, making it hard to protect the necessary information. Usually, the more qubits you use, the more errors occur, and the system turns classical.
Willow quantum chop reduces errors, and the more quantum the system becomes, the more errors it reduces. The research team has tested larger arrays of physical qubits, scaling from a 3×3 grid of encoded qubits to a 7×7 grid. Each time, using the latest advances in quantum error correction. The team noticed an exponential reduction in the error rate. This achievement, called “below the threshold,” means we can reduce errors even as we increase the number of qubits.
10 Septillion Years on One of Today’s Fastest Supercomputers
To measure Willow’s performance, they used the random circuit sampling (RCS) benchmark, which is the most challenging classical benchmark for quantum computers today. It verifies if a quantum computer is doing something that classical computers can’t. Any team building a quantum computer should first check if it can outperform classical computers on RCS. They have consistently used this benchmark to assess progress from one chip generation to the next.
Willow completed a task in less than 5 minutes that would take today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years. This mind-boggling number far exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the Universe.
State-of-the-Art Performance
Willow chip is fabricated in the new, state-of-the-art facility in Santa Barbara. System engineering is key when designing and fabricating quantum chips: all components of a chip, such as single- and two-qubit gates, qubit reset, and readout, must be well-engineered and integrated. Maximizing system performance informs all aspects of the process, from chip architecture and fabrication to gate development and calibration. They focus on quality, not just quantity because producing larger numbers of qubits is only beneficial if they are of high quality. Willow, with 105 qubits, now delivers best-in-class performance in both random circuit sampling and quantum error correction.
What’s Next for Google’s Willow and the Future of Quantum Computing
The next challenge is to demonstrate the first “useful, beyond-classical” computation on today’s quantum chips relevant to real-world applications. Willow chip maker is optimistic that the Willow generation of chips can achieve this goal. So far, they have run the RCS benchmark to measure performance against classical computers and scientifically interesting simulations of quantum systems. Their goal is to step into the realm of algorithms beyond the reach of classical computers and be useful for real-world, commercially relevant problems.
