Google's quantum computing scientists this month demonstrated a breakthrough in the field that reinforces the sense that quantum computing is for real and will be able to find its place among other kinds of computers as a valuable resource. But much remains to be done: Google's latest quantum chip -- called Willow and fabricated in its Santa Barbara research facility -- is a memory chip. It doesn't actually process any functions, it simply stores a bit to be read. Doing anything with it will involve the long work of developing logical circuits to make use of the "qubits" that make up the chip. The fundamental breakthrough, as explained in Nature magazine (which published Google's early-release research paper), is to show that the errors of qubits can be reduced below a level of noise called a threshold and -- as that happens -- the machine can reliably represent information --that is, represent it with a tolerable level of error.
