Google's quantum computer at its California facility and the Willow quantum chip.Google
Even as the world focuses on the surge of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, a much more important race is being fought across continents – to build utility-scale quantum computers.
Much akin to the race to build nuclear weapons or send astronauts into space, the race to build powerful quantum computers could define who leads the 21st century.
Quantum computing is the next frontier of computing, promising computations in minutes that even the fastest supercomputers would take decades to complete. The technology is still in its infancy, and scientists are still figuring out how to build reliable versions of the early-stage computers.
Players engaged in this race are betting on different mechanisms that make up the qubit – the smallest storage unit of these computers, the contemporary of a binary bit.
While its counterpart can store just values of 0 or 1 at a time, a qubit can store all values possible in between, exponentially increasing its computing prowess.
Google’s Willow
Google unveiled its Willow quantum chip more than a year ago. With just 105 qubits onboard, the chip claimed its spot as the world’s most powerful quantum computer after completing the random circuit sampling (RCS) benchmark, the toughest in the world, in just five minutes.
Google estimates that the Frontier supercomputer would take 10 septillion years to achieve the same. That’s 10 followed by 24 zeros. Willow’s superior ability is not just down to its speed but also its capacity to correct errors it makes along the way.
All quantum computers can perform computations at high speed, but they also accumulate errors rapidly, requiring error correction. Google’s Willow can do this with repeated rounds, showing improvements each time. This paves the way for building larger-scale quantum computers capable of performing trillions of calculations within the next decade.
Computers with such capabilities will not power smartphones or office computers anytime in the future. Instead, they will be used to solve problems previously considered unsolvable.
From tough questions in drug research to producing large amounts of energy without carbon emissions, solving global hunger, and even addressing climate change, quantum computers could lead us to solutions for all of them.
While these are problems that are collectively beneficial, there is also a race to get there first. Willow is located inside Google’s facility in Santa Barbara, California. But even when the BBC visited it, there were strict controls on what could be recorded.
The world’s most powerful quantum computer lies without a keyboard or monitor, but hundreds of wires descend into a helium bath at temperatures close to absolute zero. Unlocking a utility-scale quantum computer will also unlock technological supremacy and the economic benefits that flow from it.
While in the US, multiple quantum companies are figuring out what needs to be done at the individual level, China has brought together its best minds and provided them with more funding than the rest of the research combined to gain an advantage in the quantum race.
Back in Google’s Lab in California, Hartmut Neven, Google’s Quantum AI chief, wonders if quantum computers could be tapping into parallel universes to extract that computing power.
The computing power that could threaten the blockchain technologies used by Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, if they do not upgrade soon.
The immense computing power that could render today’s encryption technologies useless tomorrow and could unlock state secrets, reveal military tactics, and upend geopolitics for all.
Surely, the company or country that will unlock this computational power will lead the century to come.
The Blueprint