Google Announces Quantum Advantage, 13,000 Times Faster Than Supercomputers

In a landmark achievement, Google announced Wednesday that its quantum computer has demonstrated a verifiable quantum advantage, outperforming the world's most powerful supercomputers by a significant margin. The company's Quantum AI team has developed a new algorithm, dubbed "Quantum Echoes," which runs 13,000 times faster on Google's 65-qubit superconducting processor than it would on the Frontier supercomputer, the current top-ranked classical machine.

This breakthrough, published in the prestigious journal Nature, marks a significant step toward practical quantum computing, where quantum computers can solve complex problems that are intractable for classical computers. Google's experiment involved measuring a subtle quantum interference phenomenon known as the second-order out-of-time-order correlator, or OTOC(2). Simulating this phenomenon on the Frontier supercomputer would have taken approximately 3.2 years, while Google's quantum device completed the task in just over two hours.

"To summarize sort of the key features that make Quantum Echoes an algorithmic breakthrough is first, quantum advantage,” said Hartmut Neven, Vice President of Engineering at Google, during a press conference. "The algorithm runs on our Willow chip 13,000 times faster than the best classical algorithm would on the top classical supercomputer. So, think hours versus years for the classical machine".

The Quantum Echoes algorithm works by sending carefully crafted signals through Google's Willow chip, a 105-qubit processor, and then reversing the process to detect minute disturbances. This technique is inspired by how sonar systems operate and has potential applications in various fields, including drug discovery, materials science, and nuclear fusion research.

One of the key aspects of this achievement is the verifiability of the results. The Quantum Echoes algorithm is the first of its kind that can be independently verified by running it on another quantum computer, ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the quantum computation. This verifiability is crucial for building trust in quantum computing and moving towards its widespread adoption.

Google's researchers exhaustively tested the research, even tasking some researchers to disprove their own results. Prineha Narang, a professor at UCLA, called the advance meaningful. Furthermore, experiments on the quantum computer matched traditional Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and revealed information not usually available from NMR. The quantum computer tested two molecules, one with 15 atoms and another with 28 atoms.

While Google stopped short of claiming immediate practical applications for the Quantum Echoes algorithm itself, the company emphasized that it demonstrates a technique that could be applied to other algorithms in areas like drug discovery and materials science. The team also linked the work to real-world applications, including extending nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Google's achievement is a significant milestone in the field of quantum computing, demonstrating the potential of these machines to solve complex problems beyond the reach of classical computers. It also intensifies the global race in quantum computing, with major players like Microsoft, IBM, and the Chinese government investing heavily in the technology.