The Wonders and Opportunities of the New Google Willow Quantum Chip
On the 9th of December, 2024, Google announced their new Willow Quantum Chip. Hartmut Neven, the founder and lead of Google Quantum AI, explains the possibilities of this new technology, and how this new chip can propose error correction along with ground-breaking performance improvements, that will pave the way for large-scale quantum computers. Willow also demonstrated its potential for solving complex problems that are way beyond the reach of classical computers. This article delves into the details of this new technology, and proposes additional information on Quantum Computing and what we may expect of it in the coming years.
Hartmut Neven
But first, What Is Quantum Computing?
Let's first go over the basics of Quantum Computing. Quite simply, quantum computing is a form of computing that makes use of the quantum states of subatomic particles to store information.
Quantum computing uses qubits, which stands for quantum bits, to store information, and serves as its basic unit. Just as the name implies, it functions as a bit in classical computing. However, while a classical bit can only exist in a binary state, one of two states, a qubit can exist in a superposition between the two binary opposites. For example, if a bit is determined as a 1 or a 0, a qubit can be a value anywhere between that. Therefore, when measuring a qubit, the resulting data are probabilistic values of a classical bit.
What is Willow?
How Willow enhances quantum performance: 10 Septillion Years
Second, Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion (that is, 1025) years — a number that vastly exceeds the age of the Universe.
Quantum Error Correction and other Potential Applications
Errors are one of the greatest challenges in quantum computing, since qubits, the units of computation in quantum computers, have a tendency to rapidly exchange information with their environment, making it difficult to protect the information needed to complete a computation. Typically the more qubits you use, the more errors will occur, and the system becomes classical.
The first is that Willow can reduce errors exponentially as we scale up using more qubits. This cracks a key challenge in quantum error correction that the field has pursued for almost 30 years.
The Challenges Of Quantum Computing Applications
Quantum computers are not yet practical for real work. Physically engineering high-quality qubits has proven challenging. If a physical qubit is not sufficiently isolated from its environment, it suffers from quantum decoherence, introducing noise into calculations. National governments have invested heavily in experimental research that aims to develop scalable qubits with longer coherence times and lower error rates. Example implementations include superconductors (which isolate an electrical current by eliminating electrical resistance) and ion traps (which confine a single atomic particle using electromagnetic fields).
