Google says its Willow quantum processor has run a computing algorithm 13,000 times faster than the world's fastest classical supercomputer, a result the company describes as a clear step toward practical quantum advantage. The 65-qubit chip completed a complex physics simulation in just over two hours. By comparison, running the same algorithm on Frontier, the top-ranked supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, would take an estimated 3.2 years.The algorithm, which Google calls "Quantum Echoes," measures how information spreads through a quantum system by evolving circuits forward and backward in time and observing interference patterns. The chip calculated a quantity known as a second-order out-of-time-order correlator that classical machines cannot efficiently reproduce.
Willow was fabricated at a purpose-built facility in Santa Barbara, California. The chip holds 105 qubits and also achieved exponential error correction as it scaled up, a milestone the quantum field has chased for roughly 30 years.