Google engineers have made significant progress towards creating practical quantum computers by unveiling a new quantum chip called Willow, which boasts improved error handling capabilities. The chip successfully maintains a single logical qubit stable enough to incur errors only once every hour, a substantial improvement over previous setups that failed every few seconds.
Qubits, the fundamental building blocks of quantum information, are prone to errors due to their delicate nature and tendency to entangle with the environment. Currently, qubits require error rates of around one in a trillion for practical systems, but researchers aim to reduce this threshold to make quantum processing more feasible.
Willow achieves this milestone by spreading a single logical qubit across multiple particles in superposition. The chip’s architecture and error-correcting algorithms enable exponential error suppression as the number of physical qubits increases. This breakthrough demonstrates the efficacy of quantum error correction techniques, which have been a long-standing goal for quantum computing.
The researchers’ achievement also showcases Willow’s capabilities in solving complex quantum tasks. In a recent experiment, the chip completed a specific task in five minutes that would take one of the fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years to accomplish.
While errors will always exist in quantum systems, researchers are focused on minimizing their occurrence rates to make quantum processing practical. Google’s progress with Willow paves the way for further advancements in quantum computing hardware and algorithms. The research has been published in Nature and marks a significant step towards unlocking large-scale quantum applications.
Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/googles-new-chip-could-crack-one-of-quantum-computings-biggest-problems