Elon Musk was impressed, though (Fox Business, 20241). But unlike me, Elon Musk has billions and billions of dollars, and can probably afford a quantum computer.
I just read a really cool blog article from Google announcing its new state-of-the-art quantum chip, Willow. There are a couple huge claims about the new chip that really grab my attention:
- Willow achieves error correction at an exponential rate as it scales up using more quantum bits, or “qubits”.
- Willow can solve in five minutes a problem that one of today’s fastest supercomputers would require 10 septillion years to solve (Hartmut, 20242). (That’s 1025 years!)
Error correction is a pretty big deal here. Without the error correction, it becomes as though you’re solving some complex math problem, and then out of nowhere some of your numbers disappear or modify themselves, causing all of your calculations to get thrown off. Unlike our typical CPUs, errors are quite common in the quantum world. More qubits typically leads to more errors (Hartmut, 2024), and so an improvement in error correction as qubits are added would be a remarkable feat.
The second claim is less believable and raises some questions. What exactly was the problem that Willow solved to bring about this claim? Did they brute-force the Traveling Salesman Problem for dozens of cities? How do we know that the solution Willow provided is, in fact, the one and only correct solution? Did they actually test the same problem on said supercomputer against a smaller input, and then scale up to 10 septillion years for a larger input, based on the algorithm’s Big-O complexity and how fast Willow performed against both inputs? Or did Google just pull the 10 septillion number out of the blue in an effort to boost their stock price?
Alphabet shares rose 6% the next day on the news. But if these quantum chips aren’t going to be mass-produced or sold, let alone useful, anytime soon, then I don’t think the hype is going to last.
References
- “Google impresses Elon Musk with new ‘breakthrough’ chip”, Fox Business. Accessed December 9, 2024 at https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/google-impresses-elon-musk-new-breakthrough-chip. ↩︎
- Neven, Hartmut, “Meet Willow, our state-of-the-art quantum chip”, Google, December 9, 2024. Accessed December 9, 2024 at https://blog.google/technology/research/google-willow-quantum-chip/. ↩︎