Google CEO announces that Google's latest quantum computing chip Willow has achieved amazing results in benchmark testing: completing a standard calculation in less than 5 minutes, which requires top-notch supercomputing for over 10^25 years - longer than the age of the universe! Willow's achievements are mainly reflected in two aspects: exponentially reducing errors and outperforming supercomputers in terms of performance.



Just now, Google CEO Sundar Pichai excitedly announced that Google's latest quantum computing chip Willow has been released! Willow achieved amazing results in benchmark testing: completing a standard calculation in less than 5 minutes, which requires top-notch supercomputing for over 10^25 years - longer than the age of the universe!


As soon as the news came out, even Musk was amazed: "Wow!"


Pichai also proposed to build a quantum cluster in space using SpaceX's starships in the future. Musk said, "This is very likely to happen." Any self respecting civilization should at least reach the Kardashev II civilization. Musk believes that we are currently only below 5% of Type I civilization. To achieve around 30%, we need to place solar panels in all desert or highly arid areas


Sam Altman also sent congratulations


Exponential Error Reduction

This has been a major challenge in the field of quantum computing for a long time. Normally, the more qubits used, the more errors occur. But Willow achieved an exponential decrease in error rate as the number of qubits increased. The results published by Google in the top international journal Nature show that they tested quantum bit grids of different sizes from 3x3, 5x5 to 7x7, and were able to halve the error rate each time. This is known as "below the threshold" and has been a challenge that has not been overcome since Peter Shor proposed quantum error correction in 1995. This achievement is also one of the first successful cases of real-time error correction in superconducting quantum systems, which is crucial for any useful computation because if errors cannot be corrected quickly enough, the computation will be disrupted before completion. In addition, this is also a demonstration of "beyond break even", where the lifetime of a quantum bit array is longer than that of a single physical quantum bit, which is an unforgeable sign that error correction is improving the entire system. As the first system below the threshold, this is the most convincing prototype built for scalable logic qubits to date.


Performance Far Superior to Supercomputers

Google used Random Circuit Sampling (RCS) benchmark testing to measure Willow's performance. RCS was first proposed by the Google team and has now become a widely used standard in the industry. It is currently the most difficult classical benchmark test that can be performed on quantum computers. Willow's test results are shocking: it completed a calculation in less than 5 minutes, which takes 10^25 years, or 10 trillion years, on one of the fastest supercomputers today. This number far exceeds the known time scale in physics and also far exceeds the age of the universe. This also confirms the view that quantum computing occurs in multiple parallel universes, which is consistent with the idea that we live in a multiverse, as predicted by David Deutsch initially. It is worth noting that Google's evaluation of Frontier supercomputing is based on conservative assumptions, such as assuming full access to secondary storage (i.e. hard drives) and no bandwidth overhead - a generous and unrealistic allowance for Frontier


More Technical Details

  • 105 qubits: Willow has 105 qubits and achieved the industry's best performance in both quantum error correction and random circuit sampling system benchmark tests
  • T1 time increased by 5 times: T1 time (measuring the time for quantum bits to remain in an excited state) is close to 100 microseconds, which is 5 times higher than the previous generation chip
  • Advanced manufacturing facilities: Willow is produced at Google's state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Santa Barbara, which is one of the few factories in the world built from scratch for this purpose. Systems engineering is crucial in the design and manufacturing process of quantum chips: all components of the chip, such as single qubit and dual qubit gates, qubit reset and readout, must be well engineered and integrated simultaneously


Future Prospects, Advanced AI

Google's next challenge is to demonstrate the first "useful, beyond classical" computing on today's quantum chip, which is relevant to real-world applications. They optimistically believe that Willow's generation of chips can help them achieve this goal. They invited researchers, engineers, and developers to join their ranks by reviewing their open source software and educational resources (including their new courses on Coursera), where developers can learn the key points of quantum error correction and help them create algorithms that can solve future problems. 


Pichai thinks it's too incredible. Personally, I feel that this is another achievement of Google that has changed human history after Transformer.

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