Can Google’s Willow Chip Make Quantum Computing More Accessible? Photonic CEO Says ‘Not Exactly’

‘It’s a milestone for Google’s semiconductor qubit technology, and while perhaps not a massive industry breakthrough, it’s nevertheless an important result in demonstrating that error correction can scale,’ says Photonic CEO Paul Terry.

Google’s recent announcement that it had made a significant breakthrough in quantum computing with its latest chip, Willow, has spurred some questions about the future of quantum computing in the enterprise.

Google said Willow addresses one of the most fundamental issues with quantum computing: error correction.

“[Errors] are one of the greatest challenges in quantum computing, since qubits, the units of computation in quantum computers, have a tendency to rapidly exchange information with their environment, making it difficult to protect the information needed to complete a computation,” said Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven in a Google blog post.

Can this error reduction capability make quantum computing more accessible and provide more real-world usage for quantum computers in the enterprise?

“Not exactly,” said Paul Terry, CEO of Photonic, in a statement to MES Computing.

Photonic provides “scalable, distributed, fault-tolerant and unified quantum computing and networking platforms,” according to its website.

“The goal of error correction is to reduce the errors that interfere with quantum computation. Significant improvement across the industry is needed in the number of error-correcting qubits and the efficiency of error correction before quantum computers become more broadly useful in business environments,” Terry said.

“It’s great the attention this announcement brings to the quantum industry,” he added. “It’s a milestone for Google’s semiconductor qubit technology, and while perhaps not a massive industry breakthrough, it’s nevertheless an important result in demonstrating that error correction can scale,” he said.

“We agree that quantum technologies still need to mature before quantum computing becomes truly mainstream. To become commercially relevant, quantum computers need thousands of reliable [also known as logical] qubits that can sustain error-free operations for billions of program steps. With the Willow announcement, Google has demonstrated a single logical qubit. However, one logical qubit alone has limited utility. To achieve a system with 100 or 1,000 logical qubits, Google would require 100 or 1,000 of their Willow chips, and each chip would require millikelvin cryostats, along with solutions for interconnecting these systems,” Terry added.

MES Computing contacted Google for a response but had not heard back by press time.

Willow’s chip is designed for a particular method of quantum computing known as gate-based, several quantum computing experts told MES Computing. There is another quantum compuing method called annealing, and Terry broke down the difference between the two.

“Gate-based quantum computing and quantum annealing are quite different. Gate-based processors are often called ‘universal’ quantum computers, meaning that they will be able to run any quantum algorithm. Quantum annealers, on the other hand, are not universal. They are well-suited for optimization problems but to date have proven less effective for general-purpose computing,” Terry explained.