# Google's Willow new quantum chip

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/googles-willow-new-quantum-chip/123639>\
**Category:** Offtopic\
**Tags:** physics\
**Created:** [December 10, 2024, 12:26am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/googles-willow-new-quantum-chip/123639 "2024-12-10T00:26:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rafael.guerra](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rafael.guerra/32/216610_2.png) [@rafael.guerra](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rafael.guerra)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 12:26am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/googles-willow-new-quantum-chip/123639/1 "2024-12-10T00:26:04Z")

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Google’s Willow new quantum chip:

> **[Meet Willow, our state-of-the-art quantum chip](https://blog.google/technology/research/google-willow-quantum-chip/)**
>
> Our new quantum chip demonstrates error correction and performance that paves the way to a useful, large-scale quantum computer.

“lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch.”

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**Author:** ![Tortar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6bbea6/32.png) [@Tortar](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tortar)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 12:41am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/googles-willow-new-quantum-chip/123639/2 "2024-12-10T00:41:23Z")

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> “lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch.”

Is this just speculative or can some strong argument be made for this fancy connection? This seems overly incredible from my totally ignorant view of quantum computing and I actually don’t understand why a so fast computational performance in respect to classical computers should hint in that direction

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**Author:** ![rafael.guerra](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rafael.guerra/32/216610_2.png) [@rafael.guerra](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rafael.guerra)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 1:07am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/googles-willow-new-quantum-chip/123639/3 "2024-12-10T01:07:41Z")

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Most scientists say the connection between quantum computing and parallel universes is largely philosophical and interpretative, but it’s apparently something that excites the Google researcher.

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**Author:** ![goerz](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/goerz/32/3269_2.png) [@goerz](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/goerz)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 2:10am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/googles-willow-new-quantum-chip/123639/4 "2024-12-10T02:10:26Z")

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As a quantum physicist, I can confirm that the statement “lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes” is BS. There is nothing going on here but standard quantum mechanics. Whether quantum mechanics is best interpreted in the “multiverse” framework, and to what extent that interpretation is purely philosophical or has an empiric component is an interesting and open question. This quantum computing setup, or any other experimental setup I’m aware of has little to nothing to say about what the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics is.

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**Author:** ![rafael.guerra](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rafael.guerra/32/216610_2.png) [@rafael.guerra](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rafael.guerra)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 6:59am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/googles-willow-new-quantum-chip/123639/5 "2024-12-10T06:59:35Z")

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> [@goerz](#):
>
> the notion that "quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes” is BS

[According to some distinguished physicists](https://thequantuminsider.com/2024/11/07/multiverses-turing-machines-quantum-headaches-david-deutsch-explains-it-all/), it is just Bold Science.

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**Author:** ![abraemer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/abraemer/32/51403_2.png) [@abraemer](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/abraemer)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 7:15am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/googles-willow-new-quantum-chip/123639/6 "2024-12-10T07:15:18Z")

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> Second, Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s [fastest supercomputers](https://www.olcf.ornl.gov/frontier/) 10 septillion (that is, 1025) years — a number that vastly exceeds the age of the Universe.

I am very curious if the same thing repeats that happened last time IBM announced something similar sounding: In their [Nature publication](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06096-3) from last year, they state that the most complicated thing they measure would need such otherworldly amounts of RAM that they don’t even think about the potential runtime. Some theorists then took that personally and 12 days later [put out this preprint](https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.14887) where they wrote (removed from the final published version, so only in their original preprint)

> Specifically, for every expectation value obtained by the processor and plotted in Fig. 3 of Ref. [7] we obtain a corresponding value to orders of magnitude better accuracy with a simulation that takes less than 7 minutes to run on a single Intel Skylake CPU and a state that takes up, at most, 0.3GB of memory.

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**Author:** ![rveltz](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/rveltz/32/2707_2.png) [@rveltz](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rveltz)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 7:27am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/googles-willow-new-quantum-chip/123639/7 "2024-12-10T07:27:34Z")

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> [@abraemer](#):
>
> Some theorists then took that personally and 12 days later [put out this preprint](https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.14887) where they wrote (removed from the final published version, so only in their original preprint)

I was searching for this ref, thank you

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**Author:** ![Palli](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/palli/32/3380_2.png) [@Palli](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Palli)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2024, 2:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/googles-willow-new-quantum-chip/123639/8 "2024-12-11T14:18:16Z")

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> [@rafael.guerra](#):
>
> “lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse

No. It’s great engineering, but only based on quantum mechanics, any interpretation of it you choose, that applies to all quantum computers (my understanding, I didn’t look into this one especially). Or even just based on classical physics, since it’s been _proven equivalent_ if I understood this great interview and his paper correctly (that point of the multiverse is addressed at my chosen time point, but for sure watch the whole interview from the start):

I added bold below, the italics are his, and his words, this development “boringfies” quantum mechanics:

[![](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/a/7/a785c416a762d7a1a12f85d03e5a7a70dca05ac2.jpeg "There’s No Wave Function? | Jacob Barandes [Part 1]") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oWip00iXbo&t=5595)

> **[The Stochastic-Quantum Correspondence](https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.10778)**
>
> This paper introduces an exact correspondence between a general class of stochastic systems and quantum theory. This correspondence provides a new framework for using Hilbert-space methods to formulate highly generic, non-Markovian types of...

> This paper introduces an **exact correspondence between a general class of stochastic systems and quantum theory**. This correspondence provides a new framework for using Hilbert-space methods to formulate highly generic, non-Markovian types of stochastic dynamics, with potential applications throughout the sciences. [..] In addition, this reconstruction approach opens up new ways of understanding quantum phenomena like interference, decoherence, entanglement, noncommutative observables, and wave-function collapse.  
> [..]  
> In what follows, it will be important to be keep in mind the distinction between _deterministic_ hidden-variables theories and _stochastic_ hidden-variables theories.
> 
> Bell’s original nonlocality theorem, as formulated and proved in 1964 [71], only addressed the case of a _deterministic_ hidden-variables theory.  
> [..]  
> Bell’s 1964 theorem therefore establishes that any purported formulation of quantum theory based on local deterministic hidden variables is ruled out empirically.
> 
> **At first glance, there might have seemed to be just two available options in response to Bell’s nonlocality theorem.** Either one could accept a theory of _nonlocal_ deterministic hidden variables, or one could _deny_ the existence of nonlocal deterministic hidden variables

I would look into p-bits rather than just qbit based quantum computers:

> **[Probabilistic Bits - p-bits - IEEE Rebooting Computing](https://rebootingcomputing.ieee.org/archived-articles-and-videos/feature-articles/probabilistic-bits-p-bits)**

> _Bridging the gap between classical bits and quantum bits_