It looks like a golden chandelier and contains the coldest place in the known 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.
"Welcome to our Quantum AI lab," says Hartmut Neven, Google's Quantum AI chief, as we go through the high security door.
Neven is something of a legendary figure, part technological genius, part techno music enthusiast, who dresses like he has snowboarded here straight from the Burning Man music festival – for which he designs art. Perhaps he has, in a parallel universe - more on that later.
His mission is to turn theoretical physics into functional quantum computers "to solve otherwise unsolvable problems" and he admits he's biased but says these chandeliers are the best performing in the world.....................
www.bbc.com
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.
"Welcome to our Quantum AI lab," says Hartmut Neven, Google's Quantum AI chief, as we go through the high security door.
Neven is something of a legendary figure, part technological genius, part techno music enthusiast, who dresses like he has snowboarded here straight from the Burning Man music festival – for which he designs art. Perhaps he has, in a parallel universe - more on that later.
His mission is to turn theoretical physics into functional quantum computers "to solve otherwise unsolvable problems" and he admits he's biased but says these chandeliers are the best performing in the world.....................
Google Willow: The secrets of the world's most powerful quantum computer
Faisal Islam gets rare access to Willow - Google's quantum computer.
www.bbc.com