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Google's Willow quantum chip breakthrough is hidden behind a questionable benchmark

Google debuted Willow, its latest quantum chip, on Wednesday, and if you’ve spent any time online since, you’ve undoubtedly run into some breathless reporting about it.

You may recall that, at the time, Google publicized how it took Sycamore just 200 seconds to perform a calculation that would have theoretically taken the world’s then-fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to complete. However, that claim quickly ended in controversy, with one researcher calling the company’s announcement “indefensible” and “just plain wrong,” and Google has since avoided talking about quantum supremacy. That number, Google says, “lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse.”

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