TO Google will have succeeded in reaching a crucial new stage towards the quantum computing. North American technology will have solved one of the most notorious barriers that prevented it from creating a quantum computer, enabling exponentially more powerful systems.
Although at the moment quantum computers are, above all, a theoretical miracle, the truth is that with each new development we are closer to taking advantage of their full potential.
In theory, these machines will provide unprecedented levels of computing and processing power, with a number of technical hurdles still unresolved.
Quantum Computing is one of the greatest current challenges of Humanity
Well, precisely one of the great problems of quantum computing is the number of errors that qubits (the quantum bit, or qubit is a unit of quantum information) to which quantum computing is subject.
Since each qubit can only be in a certain position (X, Y, Z) for a few instants, the computer has serious difficulties in knowing exactly what the position of this information “switch” is.
Given the above, the number of errors generated multiplies exponentially as the processing units, the qubits, increase.
This is currently one of the biggest obstacles to the practical utility of quantum computers, which, despite being extraordinarily powerful, are plagued with an equally exponential amount of bugs.
The error reduction mechanism represents a significant advance by Google
This is where Google’s big announcement comes in. The technology claims to have developed an effective way to reduce this error rate in quantum computing. It does so by distributing a certain state among several quantum bits.
On the other hand, Google claims that this development reduces the error rate by 4%, something that may seem insignificant, but in the quantum world it is not so.
According to the technology, this 4% error reduction seems to be a sufficient value for the possibility of increasing the number of qubits. This without causing an exponential increase in the rate of read errors.
In other words, it will allow us to design and execute systems with more functional quantum bits and from which we can obtain a practical and functional utility.
We have a new Google Sycamore processor
To apply this error reduction, Google essentially created a next-generation processor. Nicknamed Sycamore, it is through its “muscle” that Google will operate this reduction in the rate of errors in reading the positions of quantum bits.
While the new processor and all the underlying optimization system is great news in the field of quantum computing, Google takes a more reserved stance.
Indeed, the technology claims that this is an important step taken in this area, but that there is still a long way to go before it is feasible to build a commercially viable quantum computer. The discovery is, however, quite remarkable.
Finally, we can describe blatantly simplistic computing by comparing it to today’s computing and data processing.
We go from a binary language of 1’s and 0’s, describing the two possible states, to a “three-dimensional” reality with X, Y and Z. In other words, unlocking a new power of possibilities in data processing. By the way, look at the principle of Heisenberg’s quantum uncertainty.