Google on Monday said that it has overcome a key challenge in quantum computing with a new generation of chip, solving a computing problem in five minutes that would take a classical computer more time than the history of the universe.
谷歌周一表示，它已经通过新一代芯片攻克了量子计算中的一个关键挑战，解决了需要经典计算机花费比宇宙历史更长时间才能完成的计算问题，而新的量子芯片仅用五分鐘就完成了这一任务。
Like other tech giants such as Microsoft and IBM, Alphabet’s Google is chasing quantum computing because it promises computing speeds far faster than today’s fastest systems. While the math problem solved by the company’s Santa Barbara, California, quantum lab does not have commercial applications, Google hopes quantum computers will one day solve problems in medicine, battery chemistry and artificial intelligence that are out of reach for today’s computers.
如同微软和IBM等其他科技巨头一样，Alphabet旗下的谷歌正在追逐量子计算，因为这承诺了远超当今最快系统的计算速度。虽然该公司位于加利福尼亚州圣巴巴拉的量子实验室所解决的数学问题目前没有商业应用，但谷歌希望量子计算机有朝一日能够解决医学、电池化学和人工智能等领域的问题，这些问题目前的计算机无法处理。
The results released Monday came from a new chip called Willow that has 105 “qubits,” which are the building blocks of quantum computers. Qubits are fast but error-prone, because they can be jostled by something as small as a subatomic particle from events in outer space.
周一公布的结果来自于一款名为Willow的新芯片，该芯片拥有105个“量子位”，这是量子计算机的基本构建单元。量子位虽然速度快，但容易出错，因为它们可能被像来自外太空事件的小至亚原子粒子的东西干扰。
As more qubits are packed onto a chip, those errors can add up to make the chip no better than a conventional computer chip. So since the 1990s, scientists have been working on quantum error-correction.
随着更多量子位被集成到芯片上，这些错误可能会累积起来，使得芯片性能不比传统计算机芯片更好。因此，自20世纪90年代以来，科学家们一直在致力于量子纠错的研究。

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