California, United States

A major advancement in quantum computing was introduced by Google when it unveiled its next-generation chip known as 'Willow'. 

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The new chip was developed at the quantum lab of the company in Santa Barbara, California. The power of the chip can be understood by its capability to solve complex mathematical problems in only five minutes which will take years for supercomputers to solve. 

“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,” wrote Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer of Alphabet and Google, in a post on X.

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This new quantum chip of Google has sent shockwaves across the tech world and is being seen as the search engine giant's bold step in the world of technology.

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The chip will be able to complete the tasks in five minutes which the fastest computers will take 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 10 septillion years to complete.

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A breakthrough in the world of technology

The breakthrough creation of the chip has been called “mindboggling”. It measures only 4 cm squared but has inconceivable speed.

In an interview with news agency Reuters, head of Google Quantum AI Hartmut Neven said, “We are past the break-even point. If we have a good idea, we want someone on the team to get it into the clean room and into one of these cryostats as fast as possible to accelerate learning."

Watch: Google Unveils Revolutionary Quantum Computing Chip

Hartmut Neven said that for quantum computing the next big step is to perform a "useful, beyond-classical" calculation, the kind that has real-world applications and can be handled by current quantum chips. 

 “We’re optimistic that the Willow generation of chips can help us achieve this goal. So far, there have been two separate types of experiments. On the one hand, we’ve run the RCS benchmark, which measures performance against classical computers but has no known real-world applications,” he said. 

"On the other hand, we’ve done scientifically interesting simulations of quantum systems, which have led to new scientific discoveries but are still within the reach of classical computers. Our goal is to do both at the same time — to step into the realm of algorithms that are beyond the reach of classical computers and that are useful for real-world, commercially relevant problems,” Neven added.

(With inputs from agencies)