On August 13, 2024, a woman rode a bicycle past the huge Google logo at Google’s Bayview campus in Mountain View, California, where the “Made by Google” media event was held today.
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Google has launched a new chip it says marks a major breakthrough in quantum computing, a field seen as the next frontier for many technology companies.
But while Google’s achievements are credited with advancing the field, experts say quantum computing still has no practical uses.
“We need a ChatGPT moment in the quantum space,” Francesco Ricciuti, a partner at venture capital firm Runa Capital, told CNBC on Tuesday, referring to OpenAI’s chatbot, which is credited with driving the artificial intelligence boom. “It’s probably not that.”
What does Google claim?
Proponents of quantum computing claim it will be able to solve problems that current computers cannot.
In classical computing, information is stored in bits. Each bit is either one or zero. Quantum computing uses quantum bits, or qubits, which can be zero, one, or some value in between.
The theory is that quantum computers will be able to process larger amounts of data, leading to potential breakthroughs in fields such as medicine, science and finance.
Google Monday released its latest quantum chip, Willow.
Hartmut Neven, founder of Google Quantum Artificial Intelligence, wrote in a blog post: “Generally, the more qubits used, the more errors occur and the system becomes classical. “
The US tech giant said Willow can “exponentially” reduce errors as the number of qubits increases, which “solves a key challenge in quantum error correction that the field has been pursuing for nearly 30 years”.
Google measured Willow’s performance using the so-called Random Circuit Sampling (RCS) benchmark, which poses computing tasks that would be difficult for conventional computers to solve.
Google says Willow completed a calculation in less than five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10.7 billion years, or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
“This incredible number exceeds the time scales known in physics and far exceeds the age of the universe,” Nevin said.
Did Google really achieve a quantum breakthrough?
Winfried Hensinger, professor of quantum technology at the University of Sussex, said that Google’s Willow chip shows “a new milestone in how quantum computers handle errors that occur during operation.”
“Using more additional qubits to correct these errors, their technique becomes more effective at reducing errors. This is a very important milestone for quantum computers.”
Despite optimism that quantum computing will one day change the world, or at least the role of computers in the world, experts in the field say Google’s quantum computing breakthroughs still lack real-world applications.
Runa Capital’s Ricciuti said Google’s claims of success are “based on tasks and benchmarks that are not really useful for real-world cases.”
“They’re trying to define a very high-level problem for a regular computer that they can solve with a quantum computer. It’s amazing that they can do that, but that doesn’t mean it’s really useful,” Ricciotti added.
Hunsinger said Willow is “still too small to do useful calculations” and that quantum computers will require “millions of qubits” to solve really important industry problems. Willow has 105 qubits.
Meanwhile, Google’s wafer is based on superconducting qubits, a technology that requires intense cooling, which may be a limiting factor in scaling up.
“Using superconducting qubits to build a quantum computer with such a large number of qubits may be fundamentally difficult because of cooling so many qubits to the required temperatures, which are close to absolute zero,” Hensinger said. will be difficult or impossible.
Still, both Hensinger and Ricciotti agreed that Google’s development has increased excitement about quantum computing and the field’s continued growth.
“This result further strengthens confidence that humans will be able to build practical quantum computers, enabling quantum computers to enable some well-known high-impact applications,” Hunsinger said.
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