Shanghai, December 11th (Xinhua) -- The three major stock indexes in the United States closed slightly lower on the 10th, with a sluggish overall market performance. However, Google's stock price rose strongly by more than 5%, driving the quantum computing sector to rise collectively. Google A closed up 5.59% at $185.17, approaching its all-time high of $190.71 set on July 10th, marking the largest daily increase since April. Its market value surged by $112 billion (approximately RMB 812 billion) overnight.
Google previously announced that its latest quantum chip "Willow" has made a significant technological breakthrough, causing a sensation in the AI industry. Google stated that Willow can exponentially reduce errors and solve the key challenge of quantum error correction that has been studied in the field for nearly 30 years.
Google claims that Willow can complete a "standard benchmark computing task" in less than 5 minutes (300 seconds), and even today's fastest supercomputer would require "10 ^ 25" years to complete this calculation, far exceeding the age of the universe (13.8 billion years).
The latest research by the Google Quantum team has been published in the Nature journal on the 9th. Analysts say that Willow has epoch-making significance and will become the first step in building useful quantum computing in many fields such as AI big models, drug discovery, nuclear fusion, battery design, and more.
Winfried Hensinger, a quantum technology professor at the University of Sussex in the UK, explained that the Willow chip significantly improves the stability of quantum computers by introducing more quantum bits to correct errors in calculations. For the development of quantum computing, this is a very important progress, which means that the technology is moving towards a more efficient and reliable direction.
From IBM's exploration in the 1980s to the investments of giants such as Intel, Microsoft, Amazon, and Honeywell, the field of quantum computing has long been a battleground for tech giants.
Hensinger also noted that although the industry outlook is promising, there may still be a long way to go before a truly "fully fault-tolerant" quantum computer - a quantum computing device that can be widely applied in practical scenarios. The Willow chip only has 105 quantum bits, which is still insufficient for practical and complex calculations required by the industry. To solve practical industry problems, quantum computers need to reach a scale of "millions of qubits".
According to McKinsey's survey, 72% of industry insiders believe that this goal may not be achieved until after 2035.