ALBAWABA - Google has unveiled Willow, a groundbreaking quantum computing chip capable of performing benchmark tasks, a process that would take the most advanced current supercomputers 10 septillion years to complete, in just under five minutes.
Google's Willow chip addresses a long-standing issue in quantum computing related to error correction, achieving “below-threshold” error rates, enabling the development of scalable quantum systems that can be utilized for drug discovery, fusion energy, and battery design as CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted.
The principles of quantum mechanics are applied in quantum computing to process data at previously unattainable speeds using Qubits. In contrast to conventional bits, which only represent 0 or 1, qubits are capable of being in several states at once.
Since the 1990s, qubits have presented an ongoing challenge due to their high error rates. Scalability was hampered in the past by increased error margins induced by increasing the number of qubits in a system. Willow's innovative design gets around this restriction. According to Google’s research, error rates dropped as the chip's qubit count climbed, reaching what specialists refer to as “below threshold.”
This breakthrough allows quantum systems to scale efficiently without sacrificing precision, an essential need for real-world applications. The results of Google's research, which were also published in the journal Nature, showed that sophisticated error correction methods, such as surface code approaches and qubit leakage removal, are implemented to correct chip errors continuously.
Willow has raised the bar for quantum computers with its 105 qubits. According to Google's Quantum AI lab founder Hartmut Neven, the system is the “best quantum processor built to date,” The Verge reports.
However, Michael Cuthbert, head of Google's Quantum AI group, pointed out that its accomplishments remain mostly experimental and commercial quantum computers are still years away.
