What does Google's most powerful quantum chip mean to the technology industry?

 

The reason why this new chip has attracted so much attention is mainly because it has verified for the first time the feasibility of the "quantum error correction" theory that has plagued quantum computing for nearly 30 years - while the number of quantum bits (the basic unit of quantum computing) increases, the error rate can also be greatly reduced.

 

After the above news was exposed, Google's stock price rose 5.6% against the trend, reaching a new high since July, approaching its historical high of $190.71, and the latest market value reached $2.27 trillion.

 

Not only that, Willow has also received likes from many leading figures in technology companies. Tesla CEO Musk praised Google CEO Sundar Pichai's related tweets with "Wow" on social media, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also forwarded Pichai's post and expressed "warm congratulations."

 

Since the birth of quantum computing in the 1980s, how to solve the error rate problem of quantum computing has become a major problem restricting the development of the industry. The traditional view is that as the number of quantum bits increases, more errors will be generated by external interference, and the error rate will rise accordingly, making large-scale stable calculations extremely difficult.

 

In 1995, quantum computing pioneer Peter Shor first proposed the theoretical hypothesis of quantum error correction. This hypothesis proposed the design concept of "fault-tolerant computing": that is, using multiple physical quantum bits to encode a logical quantum bit for calculation. Compared with the errors caused by physical quantum bits that are easily interfered with by external noise, logical quantum bits are an ideal design model proposed based on theory. They do not exist in reality, have stronger anti-interference ability, and have error correction capabilities. Based on this hypothesis, the new design scheme will also collect the errors generated in the process and correct them through specific coding methods to control the error rate.

 

However, since the theory was proposed nearly 30 years ago, relevant research in the industry has been unable to verify the feasibility of quantum error correction. National research institutions in the United States, universities such as Harvard and MIT, IBM, Intel, and Google, as well as domestic research institutes, universities, and companies such as Baidu and Alibaba in China have invested resources in quantum computing research, but the error rate (logical bit error rate, that is, the error rate of logical quantum bits) designed based on related research is always higher than the minimum threshold for achieving quantum error correction capabilities.

 

The major breakthrough of Google's Willow quantum chip this time is that it has reduced the error rate to below the critical threshold of quantum error correction for the first time. According to the paper published by the Google research team in Nature, the Willow quantum chip can already halve the error rate while expanding the scale of quantum bits (from 3x3 encoded quantum bit cells to 5x5, and then to 7x7, each time the error rate can be halved through quantum error correction), and the scientific community generally recognizes that this performance has broken through the threshold of "quantum error correction" for the first time.

 

At the same time, the computing speed of this quantum chip is also amazing. According to Google's official introduction, Willow can complete a standard benchmark calculation in less than 5 minutes, while the world's fastest supercomputer currently needs about 10 to the 25th power years to complete the same task, which is far longer than the age of the universe.

 

Google CEO Pichai said that Willow is an important step in building a practical quantum computer.

 

A researcher at a domestic quantum computing institute told Jiemian News that quantum error correction has been a problem that has plagued the field of quantum computing for many years. Google's breakthrough from zero to one is of great significance to the current theoretical research direction.

 

Google proposed that in the future, it hopes to promote the practical application of quantum computing technology in drug discovery, nuclear fusion energy and other fields through Willow. An industry insider who has been paying attention to the field of quantum computing for a long time said that since quantum computing is still a small-scale frontier exploration research, Google Willow quantum chip is still limited to experimental verification. The significance of this time is mainly to break through theoretical problems, and it is still far from landing application. In addition, the manufacturing cost, space and resources, energy consumption and production yield of large-scale commercial use are all realistic problems that need to be solved in the future.

 

But he also said that theoretical research breakthroughs in cutting-edge technology often attract more investment in specific fields. Quantum computing has now become a national strategic direction that China, the United States, Europe and other places have focused on. The United States' previous ban on the export of cutting-edge technology to mainland China also specifically included quantum computing in the scope of regulation. As national strategic competition intensifies and investment increases, there will be more new breakthroughs in the field of quantum computing.