The technology giant Google has once again brought a bit of shock to the tech world.

On December 9th, Eastern Time, Google announced the arrival of its latest quantum computing chip, Willow, which has incredibly powerful performance and frightening speed.

Among them, Willow has two major technological breakthroughs: solving a key problem that has existed for over 30 years - exponentially reducing errors; achieving a cosmic-level breakthrough in performance.

The emergence of Willow also signifies that quantum computing is about to enter a new era.

Two major breakthroughs.

First, exponentially reduce errors.

Errors are one of the biggest challenges facing quantum computing. Generally, the more quantum bits are used, the more errors occur, and the system begins to resemble a classical system.

Therefore, how to effectively carry out quantum error correction has become a key challenge in achieving large-scale quantum computing.

Since Peter Shor proposed quantum error correction theory in 1995, scientists have been striving to find effective methods to correct errors in quantum computing.

Google claims that Willow has successfully realized a quantum error correction scheme with logical errors below the surface code threshold, making the goal of "below threshold" in quantum error correction a reality after 30 years.

Research results published by Google in the journal Nature show that it tested quantum bit grids of different sizes from 3x3, 5x5 to 7x7, each time halving the error rate.

As the first system to be below threshold, this is the most convincing prototype of scalable logical quantum bits constructed to date.

It strongly indicates that practical, super-large quantum computers can indeed be built. Willow brings us closer to running practical, commercially relevant algorithms that cannot be replicated on traditional computers.

Secondly, achieving a universe-level breakthrough in 5 minutes against supercomputers.

Google conducted the most difficult classical benchmark tests currently on quantum computers.

In the RCS standard test benchmark, Willow can complete the computation test in 5 minutes, while the fastest supercomputers today need at least 10 septillion years for the test.

That is 10^25 years, or about 10 billion billion years, and its computing power can only be described as terrifying.

The current world's fastest supercomputer would also need at least 10^25 years to complete the same task, which is about 10 billion billion years.

If written out, it would be 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.

This number far exceeds the known time scales in physics, even longer than the age of the universe.

Julian Kelly, the director of quantum hardware, introduces the video of Willow and its groundbreaking achievements.

"Wow" was heard everywhere!

After Google CEO Pichai officially announced Willow on social media platform X, it immediately drew a "Wow" from Musk.

Pichai also suggested that one day a quantum cluster could be built in space using SpaceX's Starship.

Musk responded, "This is likely to happen." He believes that any self-respecting civilization should at least reach Type II on the Kardashev scale.

Currently, only 5% of Type I has been achieved, and to reach 30%, solar panels need to be installed across all deserts or arid regions.

Additionally, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, who is at the forefront of AI, also specifically liked and shared the post to congratulate.

On the same day, OpenAI also released a new Sora video large model. Therefore, Pichai returned the favor by stating, "The quantum + AI of the multiverse future is coming, and congratulations on the release of O1!"

Industry insiders are amazed by this: it may mean that a trillion-parameter AI model can be trained in just a few seconds in the future.

As for Willow's next steps, Google stated that when it founded Google Quantum AI in 2012, the vision was to build a practical large quantum computer that utilizes quantum mechanics (the 'operating system' of nature as we know it today) to drive scientific discoveries, develop useful applications, and solve some of society's biggest challenges for the benefit of society.

As part of Google Research, the team has developed a long-term roadmap, while Willow pushes towards commercially relevant applications.

The next challenge in the field is to demonstrate the first 'useful, beyond classical' computation on today's quantum chips that is relevant to real-world applications.

The Google team is optimistic that the first generation of Willow chips can help them achieve this goal.

So far, they have conducted two different types of experiments:

One is running RCS benchmarks, measuring performance against traditional computers but without any actual commercial applications; the other is conducting scientifically interesting simulations on quantum systems that drive new scientific discoveries but still within the limits of traditional computers.

The goal is to achieve both at the same time—entering algorithmic domains that traditional computers cannot reach, with algorithms that are useful for real-world commercial-related problems.