It looks like a golden candelabra – and contains the coldest place in the known universe.
I’m looking at more than just the most powerful computer in the world – it’s a technology that is the key to financial security, bitcoins, state secrets, the global economy and much more.
Quantum computing will determine which companies and countries win, and which lose, for the rest of the 21st century.
In front of me, a metre above the floor in the Google building in Santa Barbara, California, stands Willow. To be honest, it was not at all what I was expecting.
There are no screens or keyboards here, let alone holographic helmets or mind-reading chips.
The willow is an oil barrel-sized structure: a series of circular discs connected by hundreds of black wires that run down into a bronze cryogenic bath of liquid helium that maintains the quantum microchip at temperatures a thousandth of a degree above absolute. zero.
It looks a lot like the 80s, but if the potential of quantum technology is realised, the jellyfish-like structure of metal and wires in front of me will change the world in many ways.
“Welcome to our quantum artificial intelligence lab,” says Hartmut Neven, head of quantum artificial intelligence at Google, as we walk through a high-security door.
Marigold is an almost legendary figure, a combination of technological genius and techno music fan who dresses like he’s just arrived here on a snowboard straight from the Burning Man festival, for which he also creates art objects. Maybe that’s the way it is – in a parallel universe. More on that later.
His mission is to turn theoretical physics into functional quantum computers “to solve problems that are otherwise unsolvable.” He admits he’s biased, but says these candelabra exhibit the best performance in the world.
The secret temple of high science
Most of our conversations revolve around the fact that we are not allowed to film in this closed laboratory. This critical technology is subject to export controls, secrecy and is at the centre of a race for commercial and economic dominance.
Any small advantage – from the shape of new components to companies in global supply chains – can be a source of strategic influence.
This temple of high science has a distinctively Californian feel – in art and colour. Each quantum computer has been given a name, such as Yakushima or Mendocino, and each is adorned with a piece of modern art, and the walls are decorated with graffiti-style murals lit by the bright winter sun.
Marigold holds Willow, Google’s latest quantum chip, which has provided two important discoveries. He says it has “once and for all” closed the debate about whether quantum computers can perform tasks not available to classical computers.
Willow also solved a benchmark problem in minutes – a problem that would take the world’s best computer 10 septillion years to solve, or more than a trillion trillion trillion years, or a number with 25 zeros, which is much older than age
This theoretical result was recently applied to Quantum Echoes, an algorithm not available to conventional computers that helps study the structure of molecules using the same technology used in MRI.
Naven lists how he believes Willow’s quantum chip will be able to “help solve many of the problems currently facing humanity.”
“It will allow us to discover medicine more efficiently “he says. “It will help make food production more efficient, it will help produce energy, transport energy, store energy… solve climate change and hunger.
It allows us to understand nature much better and then unravel its mysteries to create technologies that will make life more enjoyable for all of us,” Neven adds.
Some researchers believe that true artificial intelligence will only be possible using quantum technology.
Members of the team here recently won a Nobel Prize for their fundamental research on “superconducting qubits,” which is here
Willow’s chip has 8 qubits, but the battle is to reach 1 million qubits to create a “general purpose machine” capable of realising error-free medicine.
Companies around the world are striving to create a revolutionary
Professor Sir Peter Knight, chairman of the Strategic Advisory Board of the National Quantum Technology Programme, says they need error. ‘Willow was the first to demonstrate that error correction can be done through repeated cycles of corrections that improve the outcome,’ he says.
This puts the technology on the path to scaling up to accurately perform a trillion operations, perhaps as soon as seven or eight years from now, rather than in two decades as previously thought.
If the first quarter of this century was marked by the development of the internet and then artificial intelligence, the next 25 years will surely be the beginning of the quantum era.
How it works.
Imagine you need to find a tennis ball in one of a thousand locked boxes. A quantum computer opens them all at once, conventional computing quantum technology allows you to instantly open all hundreds at once with a single key.
These machines won’t fit everyone. They won’t shrink to the size of phones, artificial intelligence glasses or laptops. But the point is that the power of these computers is growing exponentially, and everyone is trying to participate.
I asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang if this poses a threat to its business model of supplying specialised artificial intelligence chips.
And one of the UK’s leading experts in the field points out what’s at stake in the quantum world – because it’s the ability to decrypt just about everything from state secrets to bitcoin.
All cryptocurrencies will also have to be rethought because of the threat of quantum computing,” says Sir Peter.
A key Nvidia partner said last year that while Bitcoin still has a few years to go, the technology will have to move to a more secure blockchain by the end of the decade.
Sources in the tech industry use the term “Collect Now, Decrypt Later” to describe the process by which government agencies supposedly store all the world’s encrypted data – at home and abroad – with the expectation that future generations will be able to access it.
Global race
There is also a global race. China’s approach is very different from the commercial race in the US and the West.
The total resources that China has devoted to quantum technology are estimated at around $15 billion and, according to Sir Peter, could equal the combined government programmes of the rest of the world.
Since 2022, China has published more scientific papers on quantum topics than any other country. The effort is led by pioneering physicist Pan Jianwei. It’s a key part of the 14th Five-Year Plan. Beijing.
China has decided to stop developing its own quantum research at tech companies such as Baidu and Alibaba and focus people and infrastructure on a state-owned enterprise. China is trying to gain an edge in quantum communications and satellite technology.
Last year, Pan developed and tested the Zuchongzhi 3. 0 quantum computer, using similar technology but a different approach than Willow’s, and reported similar results.
It was opened for commercial use in the autumn. It is all very reminiscent of the Manhattan Project of World War II or the space race of the 21st century.
The UK is one of the scientific centres of quantum research. It was a British scientist who did the original research on superconducting qubits.
There are dozens of companies there doing cutting-edge research work. The government plans to make significant investment in this area in the coming weeks. It is vital for the economy, the military and geopolitics. It is hoped that the UK will become a third power in this area.
Parallel Universes
Meanwhile, Willow Lab raises perhaps even more existential questions. Last year Neven suggested that Willow’s unprecedented speed supports some conceptions of the existence of a multiverse. In fact, such speed could be explained by the fact that Willow uses the computational resources of parallel universes. Not all scientists agreed.
“The debate is still very lively,” he tells me.
Marigold, caution o notes that Willow hasn’t proved it, but it’s “a hint that the idea should be taken seriously.”
It’s the cutting edge of world development – technology, growth – and the British government will soon be investing hundreds of millions to catch up with Willow and Chinese developments.
It sounds like science fiction. But very quickly it is becoming an economic reality.