Google made a breakthrough that’s a ‘significant step’ for quantum computing
Although a slew of quantum computing startups have seen their stocks skyrocket this year over investor enthusiasm for the burgeoning technology, the space is still dominated by the tech giants with the scale and resources that the startups can’t match.
This became clear this past summer when IBM (IBM) declared that it has the “most viable path” to building the world’s first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer and that it plans to deliver by 2029.
“IBM is the only quantum computing organization in the world that will be capable of running quantum programs at the scale of hundreds of logical qubits and millions of quantum gates by the end of the decade,” the company said at the time.
But IBM appears to be facing a serious challenger to that finish line by another, albeit much younger, tech giant.
Alphabet’s Google (GOOG) said on Wednesday in a blog post that it has achieved a “major algorithmic breakthrough” with quantum computing that it calls a “significant step towards a first real-world application.”
According to the company, it has demonstrated the first-ever verifiable quantum advantage running the out-of-order time correlator (OTOC) algorithm, which it has dubbed Quantum Echoes.
In the blog post written by Hartmut Neven, founder and lead of Google Quantum AI, and Vadim Smelyanskiy, director of Quantum Pathfinding at Google Quantum AI, they note that Google achieved the breakthrough using Willow, the quantum chip that it released last year.
“Quantum Echoes can be useful in learning the structure of systems in nature, from molecules to magnets to black holes, and we’ve demonstrated it runs 13,000 times faster on Willow than the best classical algorithm on one of the world’s fastest supercomputers,” Neven and Smelyanskiy wrote.
Their findings were published in the science journal Nature.
The scientists said that this is the first time in history that a quantum computer has successfully demonstrated that it can run a verifiable algorithm that surpasses what a supercomputer can achieve. Quantum verifiability means that it can be repeated on any quantum computer and deliver the same answer.
“This repeatable, beyond-classical computation is the basis for scalable verification, bringing quantum computers closer to becoming tools for practical applications,” they said.
Big Tech competing for big money
As has been shown when other quantum companies achieve major milestones, scientific breakthroughs don’t always get Wall Street excited. Google’s stock remained mostly flat after making the announcement on Wednesday.
The race to achieve quantum computing supremacy may not match the aggressive push being made in the AI sector, but given the fact that the two technologies are very much aligned, it means that many of the biggest names in Silicon Valley are building these businesses simultaneously.
Earlier this year, Microsoft (MSFT) introduced Majorana 1, its own quantum chip that rivals Google’s Willow. And the same month Microsoft launched Majorana 1, Amazon Web Services (AMZN) released its own quantum chip called Ocelot.
McKinsey & Co. released a report in June showing that the three core pillars of quantum technology, quantum computing, quantum communication, and quantum sensing could generate up to $97 billion in revenue across the globe by 2035.
Quantum computing is expected to bring in the biggest share of that revenue, with Mckinsey projecting that it will grow from $4 billion in revenue in 2024 to $72 billion in 2035.