It solves in five minutes a problem computers now would need 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years to work out, Google says.

Summary

Google unveiled its “Willow” quantum computing chip, claiming it can solve problems in minutes that would take supercomputers 10 septillion years.

While hailed as a breakthrough, experts note it remains experimental, with practical applications years away.

Willow’s key advance is error correction, addressing a long-standing challenge in quantum computing by reducing errors as qubits increase.

The chip, developed in Google’s new facility, highlights global competition in the field.

Although promising for tasks like drug development and logistics, widespread use and lower error rates are still required. Findings were published in Nature.

  • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
    5·
    17 days ago

    but they’re not declaring incremental progress are they? they’re declaring success. Stuff can be incrementally improved even after achieving the initial goal. That’s not what they are saying. They’re saying they won the race… again

    • antimidas@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      17 days ago

      Yep, that’s a bit of a sketchy thing, and probably indeed has to do with marketing and getting more funding. Overhyping their quantum stuff might also have something to do with them trying to hide the poor image of their latest AI “achievements”.

      But I’m mainly worried all these companies crying wolf will cause people in relevant fields to push back on implementing quantum-proof encryption – multiple companies are making considerable progress with quantum computing and it’s not a threat to be ignored.