Last week’s developments in quantum computing have brought the industry sharply back into focus. It’s a breath of fresh air in a sector that has been largely overlooked the last couple of years, and it deserves our attention for reasons I’ll share.
Google’s Quantum AI team shocked the world last week, with the announcement of Willow – its latest superconducting quantum semiconductor designed with 105 quantum bits (qubits).
We explored these developments last week in The Bleeding Edge – Google’s Quantum Breakthrough.
Alphabet’s announcement was seen as so significant and exciting that its stock price ran up 10% within 24 hours.
Alphabet (Google) is now worth almost $2.3 trillion.
The reason for excitement was a combination of improved quantum coherence and quantum error correction.
Quantum coherence improved by a factor of 5X compared to its previous quantum semiconductor, Sycamore.
Quantum coherence is the ability of a quantum computing system to maintain its quantum states over some time. The longer the coherence, the more complex problems that can be solved.
And Google’s breakthrough in quantum error correction (QEC) was just the spark the industry needed to get excited again about this revolutionary technology.
Quantum errors have long been the bane of quantum computers, which are hypersensitive to their environments. Changes in temperature, electromagnetic interference, or even the slightest vibration can cause a quantum system to lose its coherence.
Which is why superconducting quantum computers have to be chilled down to temperatures colder than deep space, in an effort to reduce errors and improve coherence.
Quantum computers don’t take up much space at all, but they do need to operate in pristine conditions.
Source: Google
And Google was able to demonstrate something remarkable. It was able to show that as it increases the number of qubits in use on its new Willow quantum semiconductor, its error rate declines exponentially.
This has resulted in Willow operating below the critical quantum error correction threshold, paving the way toward a universal fault-tolerant quantum computer.
This might not sound like a big deal, and I wouldn’t fault anyone for glossing over it in my last issue.
But I’d like to put the realities of classical computing into context to better understand the significance of this development.
For example, the performance of a CPU (central processing unit) improves on average around 20% a year. CPUs are the main semiconductors that run our desktops, laptops, and smartphones. CPUs are also used in computer server systems for both raw computations as well as controllers for more complex GPU systems.
And the performance of GPUs (graphics processing units) tends to improve by around 25-30% a year with each new generation.
Note that these improvements aren’t radical improvements. 20-30% a year does represent exponential growth, but it is never a paradigm shift.
These CPUs and GPUs simply improve processing performance each year and become more power efficient per unit of compute.
These advancements have been embodied in Moore’s Law for the last 50+ years. Packing more and more transistors into the same amount of space is what leads to these performance improvements.
But eventually, there is a limit.
Eventually, physics gets in the way of how close we can pack those transistors, and we’re nearing that limit.
That’s why quantum computing is so exciting. It’s more than a step function in computing architecture. It’s far more than a dot on a trendline chart of Moore’s Law… In fact, a quantum computer wouldn’t even fit on the chart… it’s in a completely different class.
It’s a radically different approach to achieving massive computational power.
As we explored last week, Willow can perform a computation in under five minutes that would take the world’s current fastest supercomputer – Frontier – 10 septillion years (1025 years) to accomplish. That’s:
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.
The above number exceeds the age of the universe.
And it’s this simple fact that has rekindled a mind-bending scientific debate being fiercely discussed right now…
The suggestion that quantum computation happens in multiple parallel universes.
That we are living in one of a potentially unlimited number of parallel universes – a multiverse.
In Google Quantum AI’s announcement last week, its founder and lead, Hartmut Neven, clearly alluded to this possibility stating…
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.
This reference was to a very worthwhile read, written by physicist David Deutsch – his book The Fabric of Reality. It’s an incredible book, which I highly recommend. The subject of quantum mechanics and parallel universes is not only fascinating…
If true, there are wild implications.
Neven’s reference to Deutsch’s multiverse theory is based on a belief that particles exist in multiple states at the same time.
And if a particle can exist at the same time in two states (or more), there is a universe within which it exists in each state.
In other words, real parallel universes.
The implications of this are hard to grok at first, I admit. But hold on to your seats…
Deutsch believes that when a quantum computer is running, it is operating in multiple parallel universes.
Each quantum state exists in a different branch of our reality. These branches are connected, yet distinct and different versions of reality.
And being able to process information across multiple parallel universes is the very construct that gives quantum computers the ability to achieve computational tasks that are simply impossible for a classical supercomputer like Frontier to achieve, as it only runs in a single universe.
This would explain how Willow can shorten a single computation timeline from 10 septillion years… to five minutes.
This possibility is insanely exciting to many.
The computational potential – achieved by leveraging processing across numerous parallel universes – is nearly unlimited.
There is no Moore’s Law to confine quantum computing. The newfound computational power is astronomical compared to our piddly CPUs and GPUs in use today.
And yet, many critics are up in arms about the suggestion that Willow may very well be processing information in parallel universes.
The gist of the critics’ complaints is along the lines of:
Now, of course, each of these criticisms can’t actually be proven, either.
Some would say that the first point, superposition and entanglement, has already been proven. But the reality is that it has only been observed in our universe, and we don’t know if those quantum mechanics involved other parallel universes at the same time.
This is what makes the debate so interesting and mind-bending.
If we do exist in a multiverse, there is likely an infinite number of realities. There is a “you” existing in an infinite number of parallel universes. Could this explain why we have the experiences of déjà vu?
It also suggests that every possible outcome of any event that happens in our lives plays out in one of these parallel universes. These universes are inherently linked and similar, as they are made up of the same fundamental elements and life forms, but they differ in how they evolve.
And if, in fact, we do live in a multiverse, our understanding of cosmology and how the universe was born and evolved would be completely turned upside down.
These possibilities have profound implications. It questions reality as we know it today. It begs whether or not we have free will. And it puts our philosophical frameworks through which we live life completely in question.
I assure you that my intention to share this topic with all of you is not designed to torment you. Given the upcoming holiday break, and the gift of time that usually comes with it, this is a fascination to ponder. For those most curious, picking up a copy of The Fabric of Reality is a great place to start.
And for those who might be interested in getting hooked on a science fiction thriller series, I recommend watching Dark Matter available on Apple TV+. It’s based on a 2016 novel of the same name – Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.
I won’t ruin the storyline for anyone, so I’ll keep this very brief. Dark Matter explores quantum superposition and the ability to travel between these parallel universes. It’s addictive, and also deeply disconcerting, but I have to say that it is a lot of fun to think about these possibilities.
After all, who knows what we’re going to discover in the next few years with the help of quantum computing and artificial general intelligence?
I, for one, can’t wait to find out.
Jeff
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
The Bleeding Edge is the only free newsletter that delivers daily insights and information from the high-tech world as well as topics and trends relevant to investments.
