Experts cast doubt on Google's "septillion years" claim with its new Willow quantum chip

In context: Google's quantum computing lab has unveiled a new chip called Willow that makes major strides in solving one of the biggest hurdles to making these machines actually usable. The company says Willow can perform certain benchmark calculations in just five minutes that would take the world's fastest supercomputer "10 septillion years."

However, experts who spoke to the BBC suggested that we need to pump the brakes a bit on the hype. The University of Surrey's Professor Alan Woodward warns this specific test was essentially "tailor-made for a quantum computer" and doesn't mean it's faster than traditional computers across the board.

"One has to be careful not to compare apples and oranges," he told the publication. He also said that this single benchmark doesn't prove "a universal speeding up when compared to classical computers."

That's not to say that Google's achievement ...