In a huge leap forward for technology, Google recently unveiled their latest quantum chip, known as Willow.

A quantum chip is the key piece of hardware in a quantum computer – a device that performs calculations using the principles of quantum mechanics, which allows them to work at an unimaginably fast processing speed.

A feat of both mathematics and engineering, quantum computers use ‘qubits’ instead of the regular ‘bits’ that our desktop and laptop computers use, with algorithms and quantum mechanics at the core of their ingenuity.

Add to that the subatomic particles that are used in quantum computing and you’ll start to understand how these mind-bending devices are not only capable of solving problems that traditional computing and our human minds cannot, but also why they are so expensive and tricky to build.

But according to experts, quantum computing could be the future of everything from medicine to AI and beyond.

And that’s why Willow is so intriguing.

With a statement from Hartmut Neven, Founder and Lead of Google Quantum AI, explaining that Willow is the future of quantum computing for several reasons, it’s no wonder that curiosity has been piqued around the world:

“Willow has state-of-the-art performance across a number of metrics, enabling two major achievements. 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.

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.”

Those claims are difficult for a layperson to even get their head around, but what is clear is that Willow harnesses a power in computing that we’ve never seen before.

And the incredible reduction in errors – vital, if we are to rely on quantum computing for the most delicate and potentially important calculations on our Earth – sets the field forward quite significantly.

In a paper recently published in the journal Nature, the quantum computing team explain that – in contrast to previous observations in which quantum chips increase in error as more qubits are used – Willow actually has significant error reduction at the number of qubits is increased, as Neven continued:

“We tested ever-larger arrays of physical qubits, scaling up from a grid of 3×3 encoded qubits, to a grid of 5×5, to a grid of 7×7 — and each time, using our latest advances in quantum error correction, we were able to cut the error rate in half. In other words, we achieved an exponential reduction in the error rate.”

And with this ground-breaking reduction in errors, the team began to see a much clearer future in the world of quantum computing.

Thus, their most recent tests have proved that beyond accuracy from error reduction, it is the sheer power of Willow that is really impressive.

In fact, their random circuit sampling (RCS) benchmarking – a test in which a quantum computer answering complex problems that would not be possible with a regular computer – proved that Willow is beyond anything the world has ever seen:

“Willow’s performance on this benchmark is astonishing: It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10 septillion years. If you want to write it out, it’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.”

If that statistic feels unfathomable to you, then you wouldn’t believe the claims that this highly incomprehensible number leads the researchers to theorize:

“This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe. It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch.”

And if Willow’s quantum processing is, in fact, being powered by the multiverse, that is a whole other scenario to get our heads around.

For the time being, the team remain focused on perfecting their quantum chip, in the hope that it will power the most important computing back here on Earth, into the future.

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