Google’s quantum computing team has achieved a second milestone in its quest for a commercially viable quantum computer. The team has managed to lower the error rate of quantum calculations by increasing the size of the quantum code, according to a report in Nature. The improvement is modest and much work remains to be done, but it’s a significant step towards quantum error correction. This is essential for the development of a quantum computer that can solve problems beyond the capability of classical machines. Google’s next milestone is to create a quantum computer made up of one million physical qubits, encoding 1,000 logical qubits.
