Google's Willow Chip: What's The Excitement About? Read Here

Google CEO, Sundar Pichai took to X to announce Google's new software named Willow. It is projected to be faster than a regular supercomputer by 10 septillion years (10 septillion is one and 25 zeroes).

Willow: What Did Sundar Pichai Say

"Introducing Willow, our new state-of-the-art quantum computing chip with a breakthrough that can reduce errors exponentially as we scale up using more qubits, cracking a 30-year challenge in the field. In benchmark tests, Willow solved a standard computation in <5 mins that would take a leading supercomputer over 10^25 years, far beyond the age of the universe(!)."

"We see Willow as an important step in our journey to build a useful quantum computer with practical applications in areas like drug discovery, fusion energy, battery design + more. Details here" Pichai wrote as he linked a blog which explained Willow at length." he wrote.

"We should do a quantum cluster in space with Starship one day:)" Pichai added.

Elon Musk responded to the post, writing “Wow".

Willow: What Makes It Different?

It seems like Willow is used to increase the speed of processing, while maintaining accuracy. "Typically the more qubits you use, the more errors will occur, and the system becomes classical." A google blog said.

"We published results showing that the more qubits we use in Willow, the more we reduce errors, and the more quantum the system becomes." The blog read. Google was able to cut the error rate by half.

"Willow moves us significantly along that path towards commercially relevant applications." Google said in a blog.

It’s also one of the first compelling examples of real-time error correction on a superconducting quantum system — crucial for any useful computation, according to Google. Willow is the most convincing prototype for a scalable logical qubit built to date, Google claims.

It is also ten septillion years on today's fastest supercomputers, that is, it can perform computation in under five minutes that would take the fastest supercomputer ten septillion years to calculate.