Google’s quantum computing department has announced a significant reduction in the error rate of quantum computers, a promising development for the future of computation. While quantum computing is known for its exceptional computational abilities, it often tends to produce a high rate of errors, rendering many calculations unreliable.
According to Google’s VP of Engineering Hartmut Neven and Director of Quantum Hardware Julian Kelly, in order to run quantum circuits that can solve industrially relevant problems, the industry will need to achieve error rates in the range of 1 in 10,000,000,000 to 1 in 10,000,000.
The team has discovered that, under certain conditions, the more physical qubits used to construct a logical qubit, the better the logical qubit becomes. However, this is only true if the benefits of quantum error correction outweigh the added errors from each additional physical qubit.
Google’s Quantum AI Team has achieved a first-ever feat for any quantum computing platform by developing an error-correcting code called a surface code. The process involves repetition so that any errors, such as flipped bits, can be ruled out by what the researchers describe as a majority vote.
This is just one part of the company’s roadmap, which involves six steps, ultimately leading to error-corrected quantum computing. The company has recently entered the second stage of its plan to produce a logical qubit prototype and aims to produce a long-lived logical qubit beyond 2025.
While Google sees this as a significant breakthrough, it is important to note that we are still years, if not decades, away from achieving error-free quantum computing. There is undoubtedly a long journey ahead, but with developments such as this, we are closer than ever to realizing the full potential of quantum computing.
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