Google says it just made a huge step forward in quantum computing

• Google unveils Willow quantum chip, promises major leaps forward
• Willow can outperform previous generations of chips across a range of benchmarks
• The chip has the potential for exponential error reduction - a key milestone

Google has unveiled a new quantum chip capable of exponential error reduction - a huge milestone in the journey towards quantum advantage.

The release of Willow, marks the second milestone in Google’s journey towards creating a large error-corrected quantum computer.

When tested using the random circuit sampling benchmark, Willow was able to complete the benchmark in five minutes - just slightly faster than the world's current fastest supercomputer, which would take 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.

One small step for quantum computation

The chip was made at Google’s purpose-built Santa Barbara lab, with Willow housing 105 qubits. A qubit is quantum’s equivalent of ...