Google Aims for Commercial-Grade Quantum Computer by 2029

[F-22Raptor]

Alphabet Inc.’s Google plans to spend several billion dollars to build a quantum computer by 2029 that can perform large-scale business and scientific calculations without errors, said Hartmut Neven, a distinguished scientist at Google who oversees the company’s Quantum AI program. The company recently opened an expanded California-based campus focused on the effort, he said.

“We are at this inflection point,” said Dr. Neven, who has been researching quantum computing at Google since 2006. “We now have the important components in hand that make us confident. We know how to execute the road map.”

Chief Executive Sundar Pichai announced the timeline and introduced the new Google Quantum AI campus in Santa Barbara County on Tuesday at Google’s annual developer conference.
“Quantum computing represents a fundamental shift, because it harnesses the properties of quantum mechanics and gives us the best chance of understanding the natural world,” Mr. Pichai said at the virtual event.

Google, which has been investing in the nascent technology for several years, is one of many companies including International Business Machines Corp. , D-Wave Systems Inc. andHoneywell International Inc. working to commercialize it. IBM and others have recently announced technological developments and planned milestones related to quantum computing within the next few years. Dario Gil, director of IBM Research, recently said 2023 would be an inflection point in that the errors of quantum computers would continue to decrease exponentially through software, as opposed to just hardware.

A commercial-grade quantum computer doesn’t yet exist, but eventually it could solve some problems many millions of times faster than a conventional computer. Companies such as Visa Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Volkswagen AG are experimenting with early-stage quantum technology.

By harnessing quantum physics, this type of computing has the potential to sort through vast numbers of possibilities in nearly real time and come up with a probable solution. Traditional computers store information as either zeros or ones. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which represent and store information in a quantum state that is a complex mix of zero and one.


Google, like many other companies investing in quantum computing, plans to offer its commercial-grade quantum-computing services over the cloud. Google is interested in many potential uses for the technology, such as building more energy-efficient batteries, creating a new process of making fertilizer that emits less carbon dioxide and speeding up training for machine-learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, Dr. Neven said.

For those and other use cases, Google says it will need to build a 1-million-qubit machine capable of performing reliable calculations without errors. Its current systems have less than 100 qubits.

There are numerous challenges to contend with, Dr. Neven said. For example, Google will need to work on lengthening the time that the qubits remain in their quantum state, because they are susceptible to disturbances in temperature, frequency and motion. Such changes can hurt the accuracy of a calculation or prevent it from being completed.


Google’s new Quantum AI campus is an expansion of its experimental lab space. Many of its researchers have ties to the University of California, Santa Barbara. The campus includes a quantum-data center, research labs and chip-fabrication facilities spanning several buildings, one of which features colorful stained-glass artwork made by a California-based artist.

Construction on the expansion began in 2019, was delayed for a few months by pandemic-related work restrictions, and was officially completed in late 2020, said Erik Lucero, a quantum-computing research scientist at Google who led the design and construction of the campus. Hundreds of employees are expected to work there over the next few years, he said.

The pace of innovation in quantum computing over the last five years exceeds that of the past three decades, said Chirag Dekate, vice president analyst at technology research firm Gartner Inc. The field, however, is extremely complex and there are challenges in translating traditional algorithms into quantum-based algorithms, he said. “These initiatives are inherently challenging and risk for road-map slippage across vendors is high,” he said.


By 2025, nearly 40% of large companies are expected to create quantum-computing initiatives, according to Gartner. The global market for quantum-computing hardware will exceed $7.1 billion by 2026, according to Research and Markets, another research firm.

Public cloud providers such as Amazon.com Inc.,Microsoft Corp. and Google are investing heavily in next-generation computing techniques, including quantum, as it becomes increasingly difficult to eke out performance gains in traditional chips, Mr. Dekate said.

Inquiries from tech executives at enterprise companies on the topic of quantum computing have increased by 28% since last year, Mr. Dekate said.

Google has lagged behind others such as IBM and D-Wave in commercializing access to experimental quantum-computing machines, Mr. Dekate said. “That’s going to be the biggest test for Google, is how they engage enterprise audiences,” he added.

Google has been offering companies and academics the chance to experiment with its early-stage quantum-computing technology since last year, Dr. Neven said. More enterprises and researchers will be able to access the services in the coming years, he said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-aims-for-commercial-grade-quantum-computer-by-2029-11621359156

 

[Respect4Respect01]

Israel-Gaza: Why is the region blurry on Google Maps?

High-resolution images of Israel and Gaza are available, so why not via public mapping tools?

www.bbc.com

Google Earth blurred Gaza so people can not see the destruction caused by child killer Netanyahu, supporting genocide is never okay.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Anyone can aim for anything. It's a beautiful dream. Anyhow in Soviet Russia they also announced grand schemes by state sponsored national champions that were forgotten about with little fanfare as people moved on to the next big thing.

 

[Kruelwrld]

Tbh I think IBM is gonna beat them to it or Honeywell. Honeywell seem pretty focused on their ion trap based quantum computers and have a high quantum volume.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Google Reaches a Major 'Milestone' in Making Quantum Computing Usable

Google scientists said Wednesday they have passed a major milestone in their quest to develop effective quantum computing, with a new study showing they reduced the rate of errors – long an obstacle for the much-hyped technology.

www.sciencealert.com

Google Reaches a Major 'Milestone' in Making Quantum Computing Usable​

Google scientists said Wednesday they have passed a major milestone in their quest to develop effective quantum computing, with a new study showing they reduced the rate of errors – long an obstacle for the much-hyped technology.

Quantum computing has been touted as a revolutionary advance that uses our growing scientific understanding of the subatomic world to create a machine with powers far beyond those of today's conventional computers.

However, the technology remains largely theoretical, with many thorny problems still standing in the way – including stubbornly high error rates.

In new research published in the journal Nature, the Google Quantum AI lab described a system that can significantly decrease the error rate.

That could give the US tech giant a step up on its rivals, such as IBM, which is also working on superconducting quantum processors.

While traditional computers process information in bits that can be represented by 0 or 1, quantum computers use qubits, which can be a combination of both at the same time.

This property, known as superposition, means that a quantum computer can crunch an enormous number of potential outcomes simultaneously.

The computers harness some of the most mind-boggling aspects of quantum mechanics, including a phenomenon known as " entanglement" – in which two members of a pair of bits can exist in a single state, even if far apart.

'Magic'​

But a problem called decoherence can cause the qubits to lose their information when they leave their quantum state and come into contact with the outside world.

This fragility causes high error rates, which also increase with the number of qubits, frustrating scientists wanting to ramp up their experiments.

However, Google's team said it had demonstrated for the first time in practice that a system using error-correcting code can detect and fix errors without affecting the information.

The system was first theorized in the 1990s, however, previous attempts had just thrown up more errors, not less, said Google's Hartmut Neven, a co-author of the study.

"But if all components of your system have sufficiently low error rates, then the magic of quantum error correction kicks in," Neven told a press conference.

Julian Kelly, another study co-author, hailed the development as "a key scientific milestone", saying that "quantum error correction is the single most important technology for the future of quantum computing".

Neven said the result was still "not good enough, we need to get to an absolute low error rate".

He added that "there are more steps to come" to achieve the dream of a usable quantum computer.

Google claimed in 2019 it had passed a milestone known as "quantum supremacy", when the tech giant said its Sycamore machine executed a calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken a conventional supercomputer 10,000 years to complete.

However, the achievement has since been disputed, with Chinese researchers saying last year that a supercomputer could have beaten Sycamore's time.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Google's quantum computer outpaces supercomputers by '47 years'

Researchers working on Google's quantum computer, Sycamore, have claimed that the latest iteration can compute complex calculations in seconds.

interestingengineering.com

Google's quantum computer outpaces supercomputers by '47 years'​

The team employed a benchmark known as random circuit sampling, which extracts data from randomly generated quantum processes.


Researchers working on Google's quantum computer, Sycamore, have claimed that the latest iteration can compute complex calculations in seconds, which would typically require the fastest supercomputer approximately "47 years" to accomplish. The findings were published on a pre-print server and have not been peer-reviewed.

For several years, the company has been dedicated to this field and achieved a comparable milestone in 2019 when it unveiled its Sycamore quantum computer, powered by 53 qubits.

A qubit is short for a quantum bit, the smallest unit of data in a quantum computer. Unlike bits in a binary computer that can either be a '0' or a '1', a qubit can be both 0 or 1 at the same time allowing complex calculations to be performed at astonishing speeds.

Beating the fastest supercomputer​

Over time, researchers involved in building quantum computers have been striving to outperform the contemporary supercomputers.

This accomplishment has been realized on numerous occasions. As quantum computers continue to grow in terms of their qubit count, they have begun surpassing supercomputers in multiple instances.

Four years ago, the 53-qubit Sycamore was only a second ahead of today's fastest supercomputer, Frontier. Based on the researchers' estimation, it is believed that Frontier would take approximately 6.18 seconds to complete the calculation on the quantum computer.

Since then, researchers have added 17 qubits to the Sycamore. However, due to the exponential growth in its computational capacity, it is projected that Frontier would require 47 years to complete a calculation of that magnitude.

The team employed a benchmark known as random circuit sampling, which extracts data from randomly generated quantum processes. This approach helps mitigate the potential interference of noise during the calculation.

What practical applications do these computations serve?​

Experts told The Telegraph that humanity is well beyond the point where it can claim quantum supremacy - indicating that quantum computers have significantly outpaced supercomputers.

However, the fundamental question remains: What possibilities and applications can one unlock with such capabilities?

For quite some time, we have been aware that quantum computing holds the potential to address challenges like climate change, discover treatments for incurable diseases, and more. But beyond academic research focused on solving complex mathematical problems or achieving certain benchmarks, quantum computers have made limited progress in addressing real-life issues.

It continues to be a distant dream for now. Even as scientists increase the number of qubits in their quantum systems, they still haven't figured out ways to deal with "quantum noise" or how to operate the computers without requiring extremely low temperatures.

As Microsoft suggested last month, we are still in the early stages of quantum computing and perhaps have just taken our first steps in this direction. In order for quantum computers to have a substantial impact on our daily lives, it is essential to develop a quantum supercomputer that can achieve immense operational speeds on the scale of one million quantum operations per second, while maintaining low error rates (10-12).

Present-day quantum computers could be considered to be at the early stages of this scale, and there is still a considerable journey ahead before they can yield significant practical outcomes. Until then, these occasional triumphs over supercomputers are all we have to showcase.