Google announces triumph over quantum computing challenge through innovations in their chip design.
On Monday, Google announced that they've conquered a significant hurdle in quantum computing with their latest-generation chip, successfully resolving a computational issue in just five minutes that would take a classical computer an amount of time longer than the entirety of the universe's history.
Similar to tech heavyweights like Microsoft and IBM, Alphabet's Google is persistently pursuing quantum computing due to its potential for processing speeds far surpassing today's fastest models. Despite the mathematical issue tackled by Google's Quantum Lab in Santa Barbara, California, not having commercial applications as of yet, they anticipate that quantum computers will soon be capable of solving intricate problems in fields like medicine, battery chemistry, and artificial intelligence, which remain beyond the capabilities of current computers.
The outcome reported on Monday stemmed from a chip dubbed Willow, housing 105 qubits – the fundamental components of quantum computers. While qubits are exceptionally swift, they are also rather unreliable as they can be disrupted by even the tiniest subatomic particles from cosmic events.
As qubits amass on a chip, these errors can accrue, transforming the chip into a mere equivalent of a conventional chip. Consequently, since the 1990s, researchers have been concentrating on quantum error correction.
In a Nature journal publication on Monday, Google revealed its strategy to seamlessly link Willow chip's qubits, allowing error rates to decrease as the number of qubits increases. Furthermore, Google touted its ability to remedy errors in real-time, an essential milestone towards the practical execution of quantum machines.
"We've surpassed the tipping point," Hartmut Neven, head of Google Quantum AI, mentioned in a conversation.
In 2019, IBM challenged Google's assertion that their quantum chip could solve a problem that would take a classical computer 10,000 years, suggesting the problem could be resolved in 2.5 days under alternative classical system assumptions.
In its Monday blog post, Google admitted to considering such concerns when refining its estimates. Under the most optimistic conditions, the company argued, a classical computer would still require a billion years to produce the same results as their newest chip.
Compared to its competitors who manufacture chips with a greater number of qubits, Google prioritizes the development of the most reliable qubits without compromise, Anthony Megrant, Google Quantum AI's chief architect, mentioned in an interview.
Google constructed its earlier chips in a collaborative facility at the University of California, Santa Barbara, but established its exclusive fabrication facility to assemble the Willow chips. Megrant highlighted that this facility would expedite the production of future chips, which are kept at extremely low temperatures in gigantic refrigerators called cryostats to run experiments.
"If we have a brilliant idea, we want someone on our team to be able to ... transfer that into the clean room and into one of these cryostats as quickly as possible, allowing us to amass extensive cycles of learning," Megrant stated.
In the tech sector, Alphabet's Google is embracing quantum computing's potential for faster processing speeds in fields like medicine and AI, despite current limitations. Due to Google's advancements in quantum error correction, they're able to link qubits and decrease error rates, making real-time error correction possible in their latest-generation tech chip.
