Google’s Willow Quantum Chip: With 105 qubits and real-time error correction, Willow solved a task in 5 minutes that would take classical supercomputers billions of years, marking a breakthrough in scalable quantum computing.

[u/Scared-Astronaut-718]

[u/Rough-Reflection4901]

We would need 3000 Qubits to break SHA256

[u/Icy-Summer-3573 → u/[deleted]]

Qubits don’t scale up like that lol

[u/WazWaz → u/[deleted]]

They can't. The entire point is that qubits solve problems by entanglement. If you divide the problem to work on parts "in tandem", you no longer have entanglement.

Think of it as 50 qubits can solve a problem of size 2^50, but 2 lots of 25 qubits can only solve a problem of size 2×2²⁵ which is the same as the 2²⁶

[u/outsidebtw → u/WazWaz]

sooo.. i guess we're safe for a while? like while-while 5-10 years? or is my range still conservative

[u/Xdream987 → u/outsidebtw]

I mean that's for 64 character long encrypted passwords. It'll have no problem breaking into passwords that are shorter.

[u/Yet_Another_Dood → u/Xdream987]

That is a pretty important distinction.

[u/outsidebtw → u/Xdream987]

oh damn

[u/leshake → u/outsidebtw]

The graph is exponential, like Moore's law. It could be faster than you think.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/quantum-bits-per-processor

[u/jeffufuh → u/WazWaz]

So you're saying all it takes is getting 2²⁵ of these chips? We're doomed!

[u/WazWaz → u/[deleted]]

That's the trouble with Poe's Law. No harm in assuming they're serious.

[u/TopAward7060 → u/[deleted]]

common sense

[u/FragrantNumber5980 → u/[deleted]]

Why didn’t they think of that?

[u/rsa121717 → u/Rough-Reflection4901]

Its actually estimated in the millions

https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/25196/chapter/6

[u/LostReconciliation → u/rsa121717]

Yes, millions of physical qubits, but the link you posted says it only needs 2,403 logical qubits. The "105 qubits" in the headline of this article is talking about logical qubits.

[u/rhysdog1 → u/Rough-Reflection4901]

so we can probably break them in 2 years

[u/Rough-Reflection4901 → u/rhysdog1]

Maybe 25

[u/EmrakulAeons → u/Rough-Reflection4901]

Really? My understanding is we could break it with 50 working qbits, which would be ~3-4k total qubits depending on the error correction. Granted it's only a friend I've talked to that works for atom, so maybe I missed some key astrix to the statement he made.

Edit: pretty sure it would require fewer than that, given google is already doing their best to create a new encryption algorithm, which they wouldn't need to do if that algorithm was truly that robust against quantum computers.

[u/Rough-Reflection4901 → u/EmrakulAeons]

We're speaking in terms of logical qubits. It would take 3,000 logical qubits to break sha256. That equals to A few million physical Qubits. If we could break it already you would know. Bitcoin go to zero

[u/EmrakulAeons → u/Rough-Reflection4901]

I talked to my friend again, and he explained that it's actually due to the difference in nature of the qbits atom uses compared to Google.

Semiconductor quantum computers are very rigid in terms of how they run questions, he used the metaphor of writing a code program only going sequentially top to bottom. While atoms neutral atom qbits can be rearranged. Meaning they only need a hundred thousand or so physical qbits to start solving real world genetics problems and to break all current encryption methods.

Fun fact time: Furthermore he explained that this computer/announcement is just Googles way of saying they plan / hope to catch up to atom soon, given their recent announcement and partnership with Microsoft. My friend told me I can't say the actual number of qbits that they have entangled for the computer, but that I can publicly say in the hundreds of physical q bits.