Google has just introduced its state-of-the-art quantum chip dubbed Willow, with Willow performing a standard benchmark computation in under 5 minutes, something that would take one of the world’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years… or longer than the universe has existed.
Google Quantum AI Founder and Lead, Hartmut Neven, wrote an extensive blog explaining the new Willow quantum chip and its journey beginning over 10 years ago when Neven founded Google Quantum AI back in 2012.
The vision was to build a useful, large-scale quantum computer that could use quantum mechanics — the “operating system” of nature to the extent we know it today — in order to benefit society by advancing scientific discovery, developing helpful applications, and solving some of the world’s biggest problems.
Neven wrote: “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. 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”.
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You can read the full run down on Google’s new Willow quantum chip here.