Edward Conard

Top Ten New York Times Bestselling Author

  • “Unintended Consequences provides a provocative interpretation of the causes of the global financial crisis and the policies needed to return to rapid growth. Whether you agree or not, this analysis is well worth reading.” - Nouriel Roubini, New York University; Chairman, Roubini Global Economics
  • “…a comprehensive explanation of the modern economy.” - Julian Robertson, Founder, Tiger Management
  • “…challenges misconceptions that distort our economic debates.” - Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute
  • “Unintended Consequences offers deep and well-argued analyses on almost every issue.” - The New York Times
  • “…serious thinking for serious thinkers. …a thought-provoking blueprint for growing middle- and working-class incomes.” - Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts
  • “…serious thinking for serious thinkers. …a thought-provoking blueprint for growing middle- and working-class incomes.” - Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts
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  • “…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • “…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
  • “…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
  • “…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
Upside of Inequality Oxford Unintended Consequences

AI Summary. Google reports that its Willow quantum chip completed a random circuit sampling benchmark computation in under five minutes that one of today's fastest supercomputers would take an estimated 10^25 years to perform. The benchmark is described as the classically hardest test currently runnable on a quantum computer.

Hartmut Neven Google
Date Posted:

Google’s Hartmut Neven notes that the performance of Willow, their new quantum computing chip, “lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse.”

Can a quantum chip outperform supercomputers on the hardest known benchmark?

Core argument: Google's Willow quantum chip completed a random circuit sampling computation in under five minutes that, according to Google, would take one of today's fastest supercomputers 10^25 years, vastly exceeding the age of the universe.

As a measure of Willow’s performance, we used the random circuit sampling (RCS) benchmark. Pioneered by our team and now widely used as a standard in the field, RCS is the classically hardest benchmark that can be done on a quantum computer today. We’ve consistently used this benchmark to assess progress from one generation of chip to the next — we reported Sycamore results in October 2019 and again recently in October 2024. Willow’s performance on this benchmark is astonishing: It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10 septillion years. This mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe. It 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.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Google's Willow quantum chip completed a random circuit sampling computation in under five minutes that, according to Google, would take one of today's fastest supercomputers 10^25 years, vastly exceeding the age of the universe.
  2. Random circuit sampling, pioneered by Google's team and now a standard in the field, is the classically hardest benchmark that can be run on a quantum computer today, with Sycamore results reported in October 2019 and October 2024.
  3. Google argues Willow's benchmark result lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the multiverse prediction first made by David Deutsch.

Related Articles:

  • Quantum Error Correction Below the Surface Code Threshold — Researchers report superconducting quantum processors running surface code memories below the error-correction threshold, with the logical error rate suppressed 2.14x per two-step increase in code distance and a 101-qubit code reaching 0.143% error per cycle. The logical memory outlived its best physical qubit by 2.4x.
  • Learning High-Accuracy Error Decoding For Quantum Processors — Researchers developed a recurrent, transformer-based neural network that decodes the surface code, the leading quantum error-correction code, and report it outperforms other state-of-the-art decoders on data from Google's Sycamore quantum processor and on simulated data with realistic noise. The authors argue machine learning can surpass human-designed decoding algorithms by learning directly from data.
  • Quantum Computing Advance Begins New Era, IBM Says — IBM researchers report that a 127-qubit quantum processor simulated the magnetic behavior of 127 atom-scale bar magnets, a problem too complex for an exact answer on the largest supercomputers. Because quantum noise made each sub-millisecond calculation unreliable, the computation was repeated 600,000 times to converge on an answer.
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