Every day, we see enormous numbers of advertisements, headlines, and topics, many of these declared “Breaking News” in order to gain traffic rather than to inform the public about important subjects. As a result, these advertisements may make us miss things that may be actually groundbreaking. To this point, many of us are completely unaware of the newest and strongest quantum computing that the world has ever seen, Google’s Willow.
Quantum computing takes particle physics to a whole new level to create supercomputers such as Willow. Google’s new quantum chip promises to transition us into an entirely new era of human capabilities way past movies like Back To The Future could have ever predicted. Google is able to solve in five minutes what the next strongest supercomputers would take ten septillion years to solve. In other words, these past computers would take longer than the time that the human species has existed on earth to compute what Willow could during our passing periods. Willow’s capabilities, however, go way beyond the tech world, as it has the capability to eventually transform lives and drastically improve our quality of life. This quantum computing chip could help to quickly formulate the chemical design and development of drugs and medicinals to vastly improve health care. If Willow was used to quickly create a vaccination at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, we likely would never have had a quarantine due to the accuracy and speed of the prevention. Another thing that WIllow could do is better predict weather conditions, as it combines large datasets to create a drastically more accurate forecast.
Google states that they “take a full-system approach to building superconducting-based systems. From chip architecture and gate development to fabrication and calibration, error correction informs every step of our process”. Willow will enable users to carry out major technological achievements, scaling up using qubits, which are parts of the mechanics of quantum computing and the first building block for a quantum computer. These will greatly reduce the errors that are common in other supercomputers. Google’s tunable qubits allow for adjustment for Willow to carry out their tasks in flexible and ideal ways. This is a breakthrough in the world of quantum computing, as people have been attempting to solve these errors for an extremely long time. The second of the two achievements that Willow will carry out will be demolishing the issue of time that other supercomputers have previously struggled with, creating a new record and standard for the speed of quantum computing. Finally, along with the speed, the accuracy of this quantum computer is supposedly much greater than any other has been.
According to the Wall Street Journal, this quantum chip is far out from actually being able to be used in daily life, and Google and their advertisement of this product is creating a much more vast idea of how far along this technology really is.
There are also various concerns and flaws to the strength of this technology. The first is security. According to CNBC, while presenting a path to greater security in the long term, before this can be put into place, Willow has the ability to crack algorithms that are the code for things such as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which could be detrimental for people holding crypto assets. However, measures are being put into place to protect security on platforms such as iMessage, and Google is already working with iMessage to make it quantum-proof. It seems that Willow is our key to a better understanding of the world around us – and a brighter future ahead.
