Google's Quantum Error Correction Progress Is Significant

Photo by Rajeshwar Bachu on Unsplash

Hey Everyone,

Even as AWS released Palace, Google did something even potentially way more impressive. But first what is Palace about? Palace, for PArallel, LArge-scale Computational Electromagnetics, a parallel finite element code for full-wave electromagnetics simulations. Palace is used at the AWS Center for Quantum Computing to perform large-scale 3D simulations of complex electromagnetics models and enable the design of quantum computing hardware. We developed it with support for the scalability and elasticity of the cloud in mind and to leverage the cloud-based high-performance computing (HPC) products and services available on AWS.

Google’s progress is astounding here and makes you wonder if Cloud leaders will indeed take the spoils when it comes to the future of scalable quantum computing and the advantages it will provide and A.I. and other domains.

Jeff Dean (@🏡) @JeffDean

Our @GoogleQuantumAI team has made an important step towards development of a large-scale quantum computer: building a prototype logical qubit & showing that quantum error correction makes that logical qubit better as it gets bigger. Congrats to the team!

ai.googleblog.comSuppressing quantum errors by scaling a surface code logical qubit

Google scientists said Wednesday February 22nd, 2023 they have passed a major milestone in their quest to develop effective quantum computing, with a new study showing they reduced the rate of errors -- long an obstacle for the much-hyped technology.

For quantum computers to fulfil their potential, they need to detect and correct errors in encoded information to reach sufficiently low error rates for reliable operation. For the first time, a device has been created in which encoded error rates improve as the system size is increased. - Nature

A team at Google Quantum AI said it has demonstrated that a method of quantum error correction called surface codes can exhibit lower error rates as larger surface codes are employed. Specifically, it tested a distance-5 logical qubit against a distance-3 logical qubit, and the larger code delivered more reliable performance.

Promising work in Error Correction

The work is described in a peer reviewed paper published by science journal Nature entitled: "Suppressing quantum errors by scaling a surface code logical qubit", and while the authors noted that more work is needed to reach the logical error rates required for effective computation, the work demonstrates that this approach may be able to scale to deliver a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

The Google Quantum AI team has made an important step towards the development of a large-scale useful quantum computer. This breakthrough is the first demonstration of a logical qubit prototype, showing that it’s possible to reduce errors by increasing the number of qubits in a scheme known as quantum error correction. - Google Quantum AI

Dr Hartmut Nevan, one of the authors, said the Google Quantum AI team aims to build a machine with about a million quantum bits, but to be useful they had to be capable of participating in a large number of algorithmic steps.