Google Introduces State-Of-The-Art Quantum Chip 'Willow'

WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Google has unveiled a new quantum chip called Willow, offering state-of-the-art performance across a number of metrics and addressing long-standing challenges in the field.

'Introducing Willow, our new state-of-the-art quantum computing chip with a breakthrough that can reduce errors exponentially as we scale up using more qubits, cracking a 30-year challenge in the field,' CEO Sundar Pichai posted on X/Twitter.

Quantum computing chips, containing quantum bits, also known as 'qubits', serve as the processor for quantum computers. These chips have a tendency to quickly exchange information with their environment, making it difficult to preserve the data needed to complete a computation.

Generally, increasing the number of qubits would also increase the number of errors. However, the Alphabet-owned (GOOG) company found that 'the more qubits we use in Willow, the more we reduce errors, and the more quantum the system becomes.'

To test the theory, the tech giant used ever-larger arrays of physical qubits, scaling up from a grid of 3x3 encoded qubits, to a grid of 5x5, and finally to a grid of 7x7, and utilized its latest quantum error correction tools to reduce the error rate by half.

'There are other scientific 'firsts' involved in this result as well. For example, it's also one of the first compelling examples of real-time error correction on a superconducting quantum system - crucial for any useful computation, because if you can't correct errors fast enough, they ruin your computation before it's done,' the company wrote in a blog.

Moreover, Willow could perform a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes compared to one of today's fastest supercomputers, which would take 10 septillion years to complete the same.

Looking ahead, Google aims to leverage Willow to 'step into the realm of algorithms that are beyond the reach of classical computers and that are useful for real-world, commercially relevant problems.'

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