Google’s Quantum Chip Willow Runs Algorithms 13,000x Faster Than Supercomputers

Google’s Quantum Chip Willow Runs Algorithms 13,000x Faster Than Supercomputers

Google's Willow quantum processor delivers another quantum computing breakthrough, demonstrating quantum advantage with performance far beyond today's fastest classical supercomputers.

LS
Linsey Smith
Jul 13, 2026
1 min read

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.

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