Google impresses Elon Musk with new “groundbreaking” chip

Google says its latest microchip has solved a key challenge in quantum computing, and the news even earned a nod from Elon Musk.

“Introducing Willow, our new cutting-edge quantum computing chip with a breakthrough that can exponentially reduce errors as we scale with more qubits, solving a 30-year challenge in the field,” wrote Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet on X on Monday.

Sundar Pichai (Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Vox Media/File)

“In benchmark testing, Willow solved a standard calculation in <5 minutes that would take a leading supercomputer more than 10^25 years, well beyond the age of the universe(!).”

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Pichai added: “We see Willow as an important step on our path to building a useful quantum computer with practical applications in areas such as drug discovery, fusion energy, battery design and more.”

“Wow,” replied Musk, triggering an exchange between the SpaceX founder and the Google boss, who wrote back with a smiley: “One day we should build a quantum cluster in space with Starship.”

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk seemed impressed by the capabilities of Google’s latest chip, Willow. (Antonio Masiello/Getty Images/File)

“That will probably happen,” Musk replied. “Any self-respecting civilization should at least achieve Kardashev Type II. In my opinion, we are currently only at <5% of Type I. To achieve ~30% we would need to place solar panels throughout the desert or in very dry regions.”

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Like other tech giants like Microsoft and IBM, Google is chasing quantum computing because it promises computing speeds far beyond today’s fastest systems.

Willow has 105 “qubits,” the building blocks of quantum computers. Qubits are fast but prone to errors because they can be triggered by something as small as a subatomic particle from events in space.

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The more qubits packed onto a chip, the more errors can result in the chip being no better than a traditional computer chip. Therefore, scientists have been working on quantum error correction since the 1990s.

Reuters contributed to this report.