Google’s new chip, Willow, has achieved the exponential suppression of errors. The advance is substantial, but Willow remains far from delivering on any practical applications
Solace for Quantum
Quantum computers must operate in a cacophonous universe. These computers need quiet to make accurate calculations, which is hard to do amid stuff like jiggling electrons. But Google has made a big step in fixing errors introduced by such noise. As contributor Dan Garisto explains, in a first, quantum errors were suppressed exponentially with increases in quantum computer size. The key was a new silicon chip, which Google named Willow, with 105 qubits (a qubit being the quantum computer equivalent to traditional computers’ bits).
What the experts say: “Really good qubits are the thing that enables quantum error correction,” says Julian Kelly, director of quantum hardware at Google and a co-author on a paper published Monday in Nature. Google researchers, using the Willow chip, performed quantum computations with an error rate of one in 1,000, Garisto notes. Plus, using a standard quantum computing benchmark test, Google says Willow performed a computation in five minutes—that same computation would take a modern, non-quantum supercomputer 10 septillion years.
What's next: This is a significant advance in error corrections. But quantum computing remains a future technology. Error rates on classical computers are far below what Willow shows, and estimates suggest they must be improved to about one in a million for quantum computers to be useful in practice. -Ben
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