Technology moves fast, and now we’re in the age where advancements are touching every sector of the human industrial complex. First, it was the abacus, a device that blind people could use to compute figures, and then the 5 generations came swinging by. Now we’re in the era of quantum computing. If you find yourself asking how a quantum chip operates, then you’re in the right place.
The generational leap begins
Normal computing tasks that would take our classic computers about an entire lifetime to complete can now be solved in minutes, but does this mean this will be the abrupt end of computing? The answer is a strong NO! This only means one thing: we have entered into a new era. An era of quantum computing. The first breakthrough was made possible through Sycamore in 2019. Now with the groundwork research being done, Google’s “Willow” chip has been able to build on this and now transform into an actual framework to herald the new wave of computing advancement.
What sets Willow apart
A feature that sets Willow apart from the rest of the iterations that have come before it lies in the area of the chip’s stability. This will be the first time that a full-blown quantum processor is able to demonstrate real-time error correction at scale. This is a feature that most quantum systems lack because they tend to lose their state due to interference. This issue is known as decoherence. Now, a theorized concept that was put forward over a decade ago has turned into something substantial in the laboratory.
Coherence time is also a distinctive feature of Willow. The coherence time simply refers to the amount of time a qubit can maintain its quantum state. Based on previous research from precious models like “Sycamore,” Willow has been found to hold its state five times that of Sycamore. This is the first signal that the milestone in attainable quantum computing has been reached.
Unravelling the mystery of the septillion-year problem
To address the elephant in the room, which is the septillion-year problem, all that is meant by this is a test known as the random circuit sampling test. The closest representation of this will be to roll a quantum dice in a complicated way and then measure the outcome of each roll. Classical computers would have had the ability to achieve this if there were no involvement of qubits. Quantum parallelism is an approach that Willow specializes in, further enhancing its ability to solve this problem.
Actually, this test is more of a stress test than it is practical. The highlights of this test indicate the superior nature of qubits over classical computing in raw processing power.
The extinction myth
A takeaway is to understand that the quantum breakthrough does not translate to the extinction of classical computing. Quantum chip computers are here to assist classical computers in highly specific and complex problems. Not to entirely replace them.
So yes, your laptops are not going to phase out, the same as your smart devices that use a classical chip. A better way to describe that is to look at the relationship between your smartphone and cloud-based servers. Remember, the ultimate goal is evolution and not complete erasure.
The fact that a quantum chip computer was able to solve a problem that a classical computer would otherwise have solved in an extremely longer time does not mean this will be the end of classical computing as we know it. This only points to the fact that we need to start reimagining how exactly we think about computers, inherently signalling the start of the age of quantum computing.