During the Google I/O keynote, Google unveiled its new Quantum AI campus in Santa Barbara, California. This campus includes Google’s first quantum data center, hardware research laboratories, and quantum processor chip fabrication facilities. Google team also working to build an error-corrected quantum computer for the world.

Quantum computers use quantum bits, or “qubits,” which can be entangled in a complex superposition of states, naturally mirroring the complexity of molecules in the real world. With the error-corrected quantum computer, we’ll be able to simulate how molecules behave and interact, so we can test and invent new chemical processes and new materials before investing in costly real-life prototypes. These new computing capabilities will help accelerate the discovery of better batteries, energy-efficient fertilizers, targeted medicines, and improved optimization, new AI architectures, and more.

This is where quantum computers come in. Quantum computers use quantum bits, or “qubits,” which can be entangled in a complex superposition of states, naturally mirroring the complexity of molecules in the real world. With the error-corrected quantum computer, we’ll be able to simulate how molecules behave and interact, so we can test and invent new chemical processes and new materials before investing in costly real-life prototypes. These new computing capabilities will help accelerate the discovery of better batteries, energy-efficient fertilizers, targeted medicines, and improved optimization, new AI architectures, and more.

To reach this goal, we’re on a journey to build 1,000,000 physical qubits that work in concert inside a room-sized error-corrected quantum computer. That’s a big leap from today’s modestly-sized systems of fewer than 100 qubits.

To get there, we must build the world’s first “quantum transistor” — two error-corrected “logical qubits” performing quantum operations together — and then figure out how to tile hundreds to thousands of them to form the error-corrected quantum computer. That will take years.

To get there, we need to show we can encode one logical qubit — with 1,000 physical qubits. Using quantum error correction, these physical qubits work together to form a long-lived nearly perfect qubit — a forever qubit that maintains coherence until power is removed, ushering in the digital era of quantum computing. Again, we expect years of concerted development to achieve this goal.

And to get THERE(!), we need to show that the more physical qubits participate in error correction, the more you can cut down on errors in the first place — this is a crucial step given how error-prone physical qubits are. We’re doing that research right now on our Quantum AI campus.

– Google

Source: Google