Google unveils a quantum chip. Could it help unlock the universe's deepest secrets?

Google unveils a quantum chip. Could it help unlock the universe's deepest secrets? toggle caption Google/Handout via Reuters Google has announced a new chip it considers to be a major milestone on the road to the future of computing. Named Willow , the chip is key to Google's plans to build a scaled-up quantum computer – a piece of tech that has the potential to solve much more complicated problems than classical computers.

Google claims that Willow was able to complete one particular problem in five minutes, while the same task would have taken today's supercomputers 10 septillion years — or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 — to finish. That's longer than the universe has existed. What's the difference between a quantum computer and a regular computer? "Quantum computers, their ability to do multiple tasks at once, allows them to explore a much larger range of possibilities than is available to classical computers, which can really only do one thing at a time," Seth Lloyd, professor of quantum mechanical engineering at MIT, explained to Morning Edition.



Sponsor Message Lloyd made the first technologically feasible design for a quantum computer. "A classical computer is like a Gregorian chant, there's only one line and that's what you get. Whereas a quantum computation is like a symphony," added Lloyd.

"There are all these different computations happening at once." The fundamental difference comes down to bits - the smallest pieces of digital information. In a classical computer, a bit is binary, with a value of either one or zero.

In a quantum computer, the...

Adam Bearne.