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Google\u2019s quantum computing lab just achieved a major milestone. On Monday, the company revealed<\/a> that its new quantum computing chip, Willow, is capable of performing a computing challenge in less than five minutes \u2014 a process Google says would take one of the world\u2019s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years, or longer than the age of the universe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Along with more powerful performance, researchers also found a way to reduce errors, something Google calls \u201cone of the greatest challenges in quantum computing.\u201d Instead of bits, which represent either 1 or 0, quantum computing uses qubits, a unit that can exist in multiple states<\/a> at the same time, such as 1, 0, and anything in between.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As noted by Google, qubits are prone to errors because they \u201chave a tendency to rapidly exchange information with their environment.\u201d However, Google\u2019s researchers discovered a way to reduce errors by introducing more qubits to a system and were able to correct them in real time. Their findings were published in Nature<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThis historic accomplishment is known in the field as \u2018below threshold\u2019 \u2014 being able to drive errors down while scaling up the number of qubits,\u201d Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven writes on Google\u2019s blog. \u201cYou must demonstrate being below threshold to show real progress on error correction, and this has been an outstanding challenge since\u00a0quantum error correction<\/a>\u00a0was introduced by Peter Shor in 1995.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Willow, which has 105 qubits, \u201cnow has best-in-class performance,\u201d according to Neven. Microsoft<\/a>, Amazon<\/a>, and IBM<\/a> are working on quantum computing systems of their own.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Google\u2019s next goal is to perform a first \u201cuseful, beyond-classical\u201d computation that is both \u201crelevant to a real-world application\u201d and one that typical computers can\u2019t achieve. Going forward, Neven says quantum technology will be \u201cindispensable\u201d for collecting AI training data, eventually helping to \u201cdiscover new medicines, designing more efficient batteries for electric cars, and accelerating progress in fusion and new energy alternatives.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n