Computers of yesteryear were large, often room-sized devices, but the hardware we’re used to in today’s world are small, even handheld, and usually more than powerful enough for what we need. However, thinking of the most powerful of computers, your brain may conjure up images of hefty, large data centers in rural areas; emitting lots of hot air and using up lots of energy. Indeed, this is the case for many organizations’ data centers worldwide, but what about the actual most powerful computer in the world? Well, it doesn’t necessarily look how you’d expect.
Meet Willow. The World’s Most Powerful Computer.
Willow is the world’s most powerful computer, and is situated in a Google facility in California, in the United States. Shaped like a chandelier but as tall as a room, Willow is suspended in the air and features no screens or keyboards. It’s made up of a series of round discs not dissimilar to oil barrels in size; each connected by hundreds of black wires. At the bottom, a helium bath refrigerator is encased in bronze metal.
Willow contains the coldest place in the known universe to have been created by humans. As we know, computers must be kept cool to maximise function and avoid overheating. The helium bath refrigerator on the bottom is where the Willow chip is suspended – in a liquid helium bath refrigerator and cooled to a thousandth of a degree above absolute zero (about -273.14°C or 1 millikelvin). While similar environments have been created in laboratories, it remains unmatched in computing and technology.
Willow is the focus of the Google Quantum AI Lab in Santa Barbara, run by expert quantum scientist Hartmut Neven.
What we know about Willow
Willow is the sole tech worldwide pivotal to cryptocurrencies, global government secrets, international economies’ data and financial security, thanks to its unrivalled quantum computing power. However, as private property of Google, exactly how it works isn’t made public knowledge – as if adopted by others could quickly lose them competitive advantage.
What we do know about Willow though, is more than impressive. Willow is the latest quantum chip created by Google specialists, and has already delivered two important milestones in the tech world: proving that quantum computing can achieve power traditional computing can’t, and solving a benchmark equation presented that would have taken the predecessor at ‘most powerful computer’ some 10 septillion (that’s 25 zeros on the end!) years to work out… which is older than the universe itself.
Of course, this problem was theoretical, but applying its result to the Quantum Echoes algorithm, Willow has been able to learn the structure of molecules from the same technology found in MRI machines.
As such, Willow will be able to adapt its computing capabilities to a huge variety of applications: including medicine and pharmaceutical development, food production, energy production, and energy transportation. This is much more than simply processing data requests – it’s understanding nature better and applying this knowledge for betterment. Willow’s development so far is so impressive that members of the Google Quantum AI team have just won the Nobel Prize for original research.
How does Quantum Computing work?
Willow is, technically, the name of the chip within the computer that gives it its power. The chip contains 105 qubits – and for comparison, Microsoft’s quantum effort contains 8. Qubits (short for Quantum Bits) is the basic unit of quantum information, acting in the same way as a 0 or 1 traditional bit. However, qubits are capable of existing in a position of both states simultaneously and so can store vastly complex information.
Quantum computers work in a different way to traditional models. In ‘classical’ computing, if there are a thousand potential answers to a question, each will be explored in order. A quantum computer, however, opens all at the same time and investigates each simultaneously, instantly. Such power is unlikely to be able to scale down to a smartphone or laptop size any time soon, but the power generated isn’t to be used for personal use anyhow.
Exactly how Willow functions and what she looks like internally remains to be seen. Google certainly will not be releasing their trade secrets any time soon.
Global Competition for Quantum
It’s no surprise that the global race is on to create competitive technology to Willow. China has invested around $15bn into quantum computing development – which is thought to be more worth than the rest of the world’s government’s programmes put together. Indeed, China has published a large number of scientific papers and research on quantum, and credits quantum as a key part of its five-year plan with a state-run enterprise.
The original research on superconducting qubits was conducted in the UK by British scientists, and there remains several companies and research bodies continuing work into quantum development in the country. The British government maintains hope that they will be the third territorial power in the field worldwide.
So what next?
Willow’s power is so unprecedented that it’s beginning to present some existential questions that previously have only been considered as part of sci-fi. The speeds it can reach are explained by some as supporting the theory of the existence of a multiverse – suggesting that the power is obtained somehow through having tapped into a parallel universe. This kind of theory used to be very much confined to some dark corners of the internet, but now, Hartmut Neven is even issuing comments on it himself. He’s been quoted as saying to the BBC “The reason quantum computers are so powerful is that within one clock cycle it can touch two to the 105 combinations simultaneously. It makes you question where these different things are? There’s a version of quantum mechanics to think about – the many worlds formulation – parallel universes or parallel reality”.
OK, so this has yet to be proven, but certainly makes for an interesting theory: albeit something very far removed from the questions our own IT poses on a daily basis.
Indeed, multiverse or not, Willow is undoubtedly the frontier of computing development worldwide and with the world watching, is likely only to grow more and more impressive.
