A new type of chip has managed a calculation in minutes which would take the world’s best conventional supercomputer 10 septillion years to complete.
For context, that is ‘vastly’ longer than the universe has existed, so if you went with the old one, you’d be waiting a very, very long time to get an answer.
Google unveiled Willow this week, saying its performance was ‘mind-boggling’ and ‘lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse’.
The company has been researching quantum computing, and says it has made a breakthrough with the superconducting computer chip that could be the ‘next step in our path to building largescale quantum computers’.
The mind-bending technology could lead to huge developments in scientific discovery and solve ‘unsolvable’ problems, with governments already investing, but also poses risks such as the ability to crack encrypted systems with ease.
While a commercial quantum computer is still some time away, this is a ‘major step’ in showing how it could be done.
We’ll be honest: for a detailed explanation of this, you’re going to have to go elsewhere.
Even physicists don’t fully understand how it works, because it challenges what we think we know about the laws of physics.
While traditional computers exchange binary ‘bits’ of information classed as 0 and 1, data in quantum computers is stored as ‘qubits’ which can represent both 0 and 1 at the same time, allowing for a much bigger range of possibilities.
In a traditional computer, information is exchanged using electrical signals, a physical process which takes time.
But in quantum computing, qubits communicate in a fundamentally different way. In the concept of ‘entanglement’, if one changes, another linked to it just does as well.
Again, we can’t say why this happens, because even the greatest minds in the world don’t really know either.
Some theorise that quantum calculations might even be occurring across multiple universes, although this is far from a widely accepted explanation.
Albert Einstein called this linking ‘spooky action at a distance’ because the qubits instantly react to one another and change simultaneously, without any signal traveling between them.
The problem is that qubits are not very stable and quickly lose their quantum state.
Willow, Google’s new chip, is so much better than its previous offerings (such as Sycamore) because it has longer ‘quantum coherence’.
This is still only a tiny fraction of a second, so even keeping the computer together for long enough to do any meaningful calculation is a challenge.
They require significant energy to keep the qubits at a cool enough temperature to work, as they must be at close to absolute zero (the lowest temperature theoretically possible) to minimise movement and remain in a quantum state, even though the processor itself requires little power.
Quantum computers also need to interact with regular computers to interpret what they come up with, which is another hurdle.
Scaling them to include hundreds or thousands of qubits with a low error rate has historically been difficult, but Google says it has managed to ‘reduce errors exponentially as we scale up using more qubits’.
Founder and lead Harmut Neven said: ‘This cracks a key challenge in quantum error correction that the field has pursued for almost 30 years.’
Presenting the new chip, Google’s Director of Quantum Hardware Julian Kelly said he was ‘excited’ to see how the tech could be used to solve ‘otherwise unsolvable’ issues.
These could include discovery of new medicines, improved climate modelling, more efficient batteries, and better understanding of fusion power.
But we would have to rethink our current systems of data security, as quantum computers would be able to break cryptographic codes with ease.
This could be a boon to cyber criminals, but could also allow the creation of new and more secure encryption methods.
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