Inside the sub-zero lair of the world's most powerful computer
40 minutes ago Share Save Faisal Islam Economics editor Share Save
Inside the secretive lab which stores the world's most powerful computer
It looks like a golden chandelier and contains the coldest place in the universe. What I am looking at is not just the most powerful computer in the world, but technology pivotal to financial security, Bitcoin, government secrets, the world economy and more. Quantum computing holds the key to which companies and countries win - and lose - the rest of the 21st Century. In front of me suspended a metre in the air, in a Google facility in Santa Barbara California, is Willow. Frankly, it was not what I expected.
There are no screens or keyboards, let alone holographic head cams or brain-reading chips. Willow is an oil barrel-sized series of round discs connected by hundreds of black control wires descending into a bronze liquid helium bath refrigerator keeping the Quantum microchip a thousandth of a degree above absolute zero. It looks, and feels, very eighties, but if quantum's potential is realised, the metal and wire jellyfish structure in front of me will transform the world, in many ways.
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