What Is Willow Quantum Chip? Key Capabilities & Multiverse Debate

Quantum computing is getting closer to reality than ever. In December 2024, Google released the Willow quantum chip, which demonstrates extremely fast processing capabilities and can handle errors during computations.

Willow represents a new generation of quantum computing solutions that offer capabilities well beyond those of classical computers.

Below, we’ll examine everything we know about the Google quantum computing chip Willow so far, including its overall capabilities, performance metrics, and implications for the multiverse theory.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. What Is Willow Quantum Chip?
3. Why Does the Willow Quantum Chip Matter?
4. Willow Quantum Chip's Key Performance Metrics
5. Willow's Core Capabilities
6. Crypto Threat: Can Willow Break Bitcoin?
7. Willow Quantum Chip & Multiverse Debate
8. What's Next for the Google Quantum Computing Chip Willow?
9. The Bottom Line
10. FAQs
11. References

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. What Is Willow Quantum Chip?
3. Why Does the Willow Quantum Chip Matter?
Show Full Guide
4. Willow Quantum Chip's Key Performance Metrics
5. Willow's Core Capabilities
6. Crypto Threat: Can Willow Break Bitcoin?
7. Willow Quantum Chip & Multiverse Debate
8. What's Next for the Google Quantum Computing Chip Willow?
9. The Bottom Line
10. FAQs
11. References

What Is Willow Quantum Chip?

Willow is a “state-of-the-art” quantum chip. It has made waves because it has achieved below-threshold performance, decreasing the number of errors while scaling up the number of qubits during processing.

Google’s announcement blog post claims that Willow displays real-time error correction on a superconducting quantum system.

Hartmut Neven, founder and lead of Google Quantum AI, said in the announcement blog post:

“As the first system below the threshold, this is the most convincing prototype for a scalable logical qubit built to date. It’s a strong sign that useful, very large quantum computers can indeed be built. Willow brings us closer to running practical, commercially relevant algorithms that can’t be replicated on conventional computers.”

At the time of writing, there is no information about the Google quantum computing chip Willow’s price.

Willow is the most advanced quantum chip yet, designed for state-of-the-art performance and flexibility. Our tunable qubits and couplers enable fast gates and operations, leading to improved performance across many metrics. Check it out →https://t.co/sp0rL4GQXT #QuantumAI pic.twitter.com/CaJpQW7GBI

— Google Quantum AI (@GoogleQuantumAI) December 16, 2024

Why Does the Willow Quantum Chip Matter?

The Willow quantum chip manages to solve errors during processing that interrupt the computational process. This enables it to perform more complex computations without making mistakes, something that has proved a sticking point for many quantum researchers in the past.

Dr. Stefan Leichenauer, vice president of engineering at SandboxAQ, told Techopedia:

“The transformative potential of quantum computing can only be realized when quantum errors are corrected on-the-fly without interrupting the computation. Google’s Willow chip achieves a level of performance that clearly demonstrates quantum error correction, and furthermore, that the error correction becomes more effective if we devote more computational resources toward it.”

That being said, Leichenauer did note there are still more challenges on the road ahead to address.

“The remaining challenge for quantum computing is one of scale: can we replicate the success of Willow with thousands of times more qubits? At that point, we can begin to tackle some really exciting problems in chemistry, biopharma, and materials.”

Willow Quantum Chip’s Key Performance Metrics

Willow’s Core Capabilities

Willow offers a number of capabilities, including:

Reduced Errors

Google claims that Willow can reduce errors as the scale of processing increases. In fact, the more qubits Willow uses, the more errors are reduced.

10. Google’s Willow Chip

The first quantum chip to demonstrate exponential error reduction as qubits scale.

Completed a benchmark computation in under 5 minutes—a task that would take the fastest supercomputer 10 sextillion years. pic.twitter.com/1ybcJuY9BM

— Dhakshana Moorthy (@the_dhakshu_) December 30, 2024

High Speed

Willow is also capable of high-speed processing. In practice, it can perform a standard benchmark computation that would take the Frontier supercomputer 10 septillion years in just five minutes.

Google's new quantum computing chip #Willow is capable of solving computational problems in under 5 minutes, that would otherwise take a leading classical computer: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years https://t.co/2MTU0srHaV pic.twitter.com/gYGuMqP88K

— Elena Neira (@elenaneira) January 5, 2025

Problem-Solving

The increased computational power of the Google Willow quantum chip also opens the door to solving problems that classical computers simply don’t have the bandwidth to process.

Saptashwa Bhattacharyya, PhD Astrophysics, said in the Towards Data Science blog post:

“Future of quantum computing could be very exciting because this type of processor should be the backbone of building large-scale error-corrected quantum computers.”

Crypto Threat: Can Willow Break Bitcoin?

With any quantum advancement, a question about its impact on blockchain-driven technology like Bitcoin (BTC) arises. Willow Chip can perform complex calculations in minutes that would take a classical supercomputer a monumental amount of time to do, but it doesn’t have the power to decrypt Bitcoin just yet.

Bernstein analysts issued a note to its clients in December stating that Willow’s 105 qubits fell short of the millions of qubits needed to attack Bitcoin encryption mechanisms like the Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) and secure hash algorithm (SHA-256).

However, if quantum computers became advanced enough, they would theoretically be able to decrypt Bitcoin’s encryption, leaving wallet holders open to theft from cybercrimes.

Although it doesn’t appear that this will happen just yet, Gartner suggests that by 2029, advances in quantum computing will make the asymmetric cryptography that technologies like Bitcoin rely on unsafe and eventually become fully breakable in 2034.

Willow Quantum Chip & Multiverse Debate

Multiverse Theory & Its Connection to Quantum Computing

One of the theories surrounding quantum computing, made by physicist David Deutsch in The Fabric of Reality, suggests our universe exists alongside other parallel dimensions and that quantum computation might take place across parallel universes.

The Willow quantum chip has started a multiverse debate on whether its ability to perform computations at such a high rate proves the multiverse theory.

Does Willow Prove Multiverse?

The main argument that Willow helps prove the existence of the multiverse is that it helped solve a problem that would have taken a classical supercomputer 10 septillion years to perform in just five minutes.

According to Neven, “This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe. It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse.”

However, Neven has received criticism for this statement, most notably from astrophysicist and science writer Ethan Siegel, who suggests that “Neven has conflated the notion of a quantum mechanical Hilbert space, which is an infinite-dimensional mathematical space where quantum mechanical wave functions ‘live,’ with the notion of parallel universes and a multiverse,” The Daily Mail reported.

The article notes that, under this view, even the existence of a successful quantum computer wouldn’t prove the existence of a multiverse. It also seems unlikely that a computer manufactured by human beings could prove the existence of parallel universes.

What’s Next for the Google Quantum Computing Chip Willow?

While the future of the new quantum chip Willow is unclear, Google did share that the next challenge for quantum computing will be demonstrating a “useful, beyond-classical” computation on modern chips that can be used in real-world applications.

As part of this effort, Google seeks to combine the RCS benchmark to measure performance against classical computers with simulations of quantum systems to make new discoveries.

“Our goal is to do both at the same time – to step into the realm of algorithms that are beyond the reach of classical computers and that are useful for real-world, commercially relevant problems,” Neven said.

The Bottom Line

Willow represents a new generation of quantum chips that are coming to lay the groundwork for real-world use cases. So far, much of the discussion about quantum computing has been theoretical, but these kinds of chips will help to provide more practical alternatives to classic computers.

This will be important not only in expanding the processing capabilities of modern computers but also in giving them the bandwidth to run more powerful AI models in the future.

FAQs