Google Quantum AI's New Willow Chip Can Do in Minutes That Supercomputers Would Take 10 Septillion Years

On Monday, Alphabet Inc’s GOOG GOOGL Google Quantum AI founder and head Hartmut Neven announced its latest quantum chip Willow.

Willow can reduce errors exponentially as the company scales up using more qubits.

Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes, which would have taken one of the fastest supercomputers ten septillions or 10^25 years to complete.

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The Willow chip marks a significant milestone in the journey that began over a decade ago. In 2012, when Neven founded Google Quantum AI, it aimed to create a large-scale quantum computer that could harness the principles of quantum mechanics for societal benefits—advancing scientific discovery, developing practical applications, and addressing some of the toughest challenges.

As part of Google Research, Neven’s team has been following a long-term roadmap, and Willow brought it closer to achieving commercially relevant quantum applications.

One of the significant challenges in quantum computing is dealing with errors in qubits, which tend to interact with their surroundings, making it hard to protect the data. Typically, increasing the number of qubits leads to more errors.

However, Willow’s latest results, published in Nature, demonstrate that Willow reduced errors exponentially as it scaled up the number of qubits.

By using quantum error correction, it managed to halve the error rate with each increase in qubit arrays, helping it reach “below-threshold” error rates.

Willow also achieved a breakthrough in real-time error correction on a superconducting quantum system, indicating that error correction significantly improves the system.

Fabricated at Google’s facility in Santa Barbara, Willow focuses on the quantity and quality of qubits, resulting in industry-leading performance in error correction and random circuit sampling. With 105 qubits, Willow has already outperformed prior quantum systems.

In November, Nvidia Corp NVDA tapped Quantum AI to drive the development of next-generation quantum computing devices. The collaboration fosters faster quantum simulations, reducing week-long processes and advancing quantum hardware innovation.

Wedbush‘s Dan Ives projected a Nasdaq rally backed by Nvidia’s artificial intelligence semiconductor market dominance.

The analyst flagged Nvidia’s partnership with Google Quantum AI as one of the key catalysts for Nvidia’s upside.

Price Action: GOOGL stock is up 0.80% at $176.12 at last check Monday.

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Photo via Quantum Ai