Google says its Willow chip can complete a computation in less than five minutes that would take other fast supercomputers 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
Google’s quantum computing division unveiled a new chip, dubbed Willow, that the tech giant says makes it infinitely faster and better than existing supercomputers.
The chip addresses two major problems with quantum computers as we know them today. First, Google claims Willow can reduce quantum computing errors “exponentially.” Quantum computers, as Microsoft’s Azure Quantum explains, are more prone to errors than classical computers because they exist in fragile states.
And researchers believe that quantum computers need more qubits to be more powerful—but more qubits also means more errors. Tackling this error issue has long been one of the quantum computing sector’s largest challenges—one Google may be able to tackle.
“The more qubits we use in Willow, the more we reduce errors, and the more quantum the system becomes”, writes Google Quantum AI lead Hartmut Neven (a qubit is a basic unit of quantum information, and the building block for a quantum computer).
