Sundar Pichai Announces Google’s Quantum Chip, Willow; Elon Musk Reacts

Yesterday Google officially unveiled a new quantum chip called Willow, which has earned a lot of appreciation in the industry. As per an official post by Sundar Pichai, more errors are reduced exponentially as more qubits are used in Willow.

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: https://t.co/dgPuXOoBSZ

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) December 9, 2024

It is revealed that in benchmark tests, Willow solved a standard computation in <5 mins that would take a leading supercomputer over 10^25 years which is far beyond the age of the universe. Willow helps in cracking a key challenge in quantum error correction that the field has pursued for almost 30 years.

Willow outperformed the Frontier supercomputer in a benchmark algorithm, marking a significant step for the company’s ambitions in quantum technology. Pichai has also mentioned that Willow is seen as an important step in building a useful quantum computer with practical applications in areas like drug discovery, fusion energy, battery design, and more.

In an official blog post, the company has also mentioned that with 105 qubits, Willow has best-in-class performance across two system benchmarks: quantum error correction and random circuit sampling.

Well, Willow not only received appreciation from users around the world but it also impressed Elon Musk as he commented “Wow” on Pichai’s post. To this Pichai replied, “We should do a quantum cluster in space with Starship one day. ”

Musk continued the conversation saying, “That will probably happen” and also mentioned the philosophy based on the Kardashev scale. This online conversation between the two grabbed great attention from the X users who then posted about their opinions in the comment section.