Google’s Willow Chip Breaks Quantum Speed Record

Washington D.C. — Google has just made quantum history. Its Willow chip achieved the first-ever verifiable quantum advantage, running a new algorithm called Quantum Echoes 13,000 times faster than the best classical algorithm on the world’s fastest supercomputer.

Announcing the news on X, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said the breakthrough could transform science by helping researchers “explain interactions between atoms in a molecule using nuclear magnetic resonance.” That means major progress ahead in drug discovery and materials science.

The result is verifiable, meaning it can be repeated on other quantum computers — a first for the field. “This is a big step toward the first real-world application of quantum computing,” Pichai said.

Google’s Willow chip has been breaking barriers for years. In 2019, it solved a problem that would’ve taken supercomputers thousands of years. In 2024, it dramatically cut quantum errors — solving a decades-old challenge.

Now, its Quantum Echoes algorithm — an out-of-order time correlator (OTOC) — can analyze how particles interact, revealing structures of molecules, magnets, and even black holes.

Google’s blog called this “the first repeatable, beyond-classical computation,” showing that quantum computers are finally moving from theory to practical science.

In simple terms: the Willow chip sends signals into its quantum system, tweaks one qubit, then reverses the process to listen for a returning “echo” — a whisper from the quantum world that could reshape the future of technology.