COMPUTING '' WILLOW'S '' COMPOSITES : STUDENTS ESSAY

NO KEYBOARDS or screens, just simply unparalleled computing power. Willow, housed at Google's quantum facility - is capable of solving within minutes complex problems that would take the best computer in the world ' more than trillions of years '.

The cutting edge of the frontier of the world, of technology, of growth may sound like science fiction, but it is rapidly becoming an economic fact.

Inside a Google facility in Santa Barbara,  California, lives Willow, the most powerful computer in the world. But this is no ordinary PC, it is a quantum computer.

In the words of BBC economics editor, Faisal Islam, '' it looks a golden chandelier and contains the coldest place in the known universe '', but contains '' technology '' pivotal to financial security, Bitcoin, government secrets, the world economy and more''.

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.  

There are no screens or or keyboards. Each quantum computer is given a name such as Yakushima or Mendocino, they are each wrapped in a piece of contemporary art, and various graffiti-style murals adorn the walls.

According to Hartmut Neven, Google's  Quantum AI chief, the Willow chip has settled ''once and for all '' the discussion about whether quantum computers can do tasks that classical computers can't.

WILLOW also solved a benchmark problem in minutes that would have taken the best computer in the world 10 septillion years  - more than the age of the universe.

This theoretical result was recently applied to the Quantum Echoes algorithms, impossible for conventional computers, which helps learn the structure of molecules from the same technology used in MRI machines.

In Neven's words this quantum chip can help with many problems facing humankind right now.

'' It will enable us to discover medicines more efficiently, '' he told the BBC. '' It will help us make food production more efficient, it will help us produce energy, to transport energy, to store energy - solve climate change & human hunger.

'' It allows us to understand nature much better, and then unlock its secrets to build technologies that make life more pleasant for all off us.''

This Quantum Crown Essay's Publishing continues. The World Students Society thanks the Monitoring Desk, Dawn Newspaper.