Google Announces Quantum Chip Error ‘Breakthrough’

Google said its latest quantum chip, named Willow, can complete a benchmark test in five minutes that would take 10 septillion years for one of the world’s fastest supercomputers — a figure expressed as 10 followed by 24 zeroes.

While the benchmark test does not equate to the performance of useful calculations, Google also said Willow makes progress toward reducing errors, a significant issue for quantum chips.

Developed in a purpose-built lab in Santa Barbara, the Willow chip could bring in significant advances for artificial intelligence, Google said.

Quantum computing could help in the creation of nuclear fusion reactors and allow advances in medical science, such as reading MRI scans at atom-level detail that would then be processed by AI, the company said.

Error correction

“Quantum processors are peeling away at a double exponential rate and will continue to vastly outperform classical computers as we scale up,” said Hartmut Neven, the founder of Google Quantum AI, where the chip was developed.

The latest advance in error correction, which was detailed in Nature magazine on Monday, “cracks a key challenge in quantum error correction that the field has pursued for almost 30 years”.

He said the chip’s operation, which relies on quantum effects, “lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse”.

Google said the chip “paves the way to a useful, large-scale quantum computer”.

Experts say that even with the billions in research being poured into the field, general-purpose quantum computers are still several years away.

Fusion reactors

Neven said initial uses for quantum computers could focus on simulation of systems where quantum effects are important, such as the design of nuclear fusion reactors, understanding the functioning of drugs and pharmaceutical development, and developing better car batteries.

Michael Cuthbert, director of the UK’s recently launched National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC), told the BBC he considered the chip a “milestone rather than a breakthrough” but that it was “clearly a highly impressive piece of work”.

On Friday researchers from Oxford University and Japan’s Osaka University published a paper showing a very low error rate in a trapped-ion quantum computer.

The Oxford-Osaka approach allows the system to work at room temperature, unlike Google’s Willow, which requires very low temperatures to operate.